@jsw29 I had refrained from providing my own opinion on the subject to avoid bias, but now that there are a few answers already... I always believed the first reading to be the case, but recently I saw someone represent KISS as "Keep it simple and stupid". It seemed a ridiculous interpretation but I thought best to Google before correcting them, and found a few more examples of people using that interpretation (mainly in the software development sector). There didn't seem to be any definitive proof one way or the other.