Acronym Significance

Acronyms are everywhere nowadays. It sometimes seems as if attaching an acronym to something gives it a greater importance and significance. I could have a garage sale at my house tomorrow, and try to publish it in the newspaper as Adel's Gently Used Garage Sale (AGUGS) and then just reference it like that.

Every specialized field has its own set of acronyms. If you want to know the meaning of an acronym you come across, you can find a plethora of them on the website Acronym Finder, which has more than 750,000 user-edited definitions. Some of them are really funny or interesting, such as FWI - which means flying while intoxicated. Another one I like is KOOROC - keep out of reach of children (used by the federal government's safety website).

Especially in the online world, we are becoming more and more dependent on these useful shortcuts. Hey IBB (I'll be back), BRB(be right back), G2G(got to go), and TTYL (talk to you later) are all necessary weapons of the chatter to ward off CTS(carpal tunnel syndrome). Well, at least to delay it's onset a little bit.

There are some really funny ones out there too. I found this one on acronym finder - ROFLMAOSHIHLH, which is Rolling on the Floor Laughing My Ass Off So Hard It Hurts Like Hell.

There are also some that would make you scratch your head, like JFTHOI, which is Just for the Heck of It. Even the word "acronym" is an acronym. There are many humorous versions, the best of which is probably "A Contrived Reduction Of Nomenclature Yielding Mnemonics."

The longest acronym out there belongs to , yep you guessed it, the government. ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC is a U.S. Navy acronym standing for "Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command." I wonder how many people have used that acronym in speech. Probably not more than four.

There are some really useful acronyms out there to help you learn things. For example, the one to remember the colors of the spectrum is ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). And STOP is Stop, Talk, Observe, Prevent or Stop, Think, Observe, and Plan(for rescuing).

In the Information Technology sector acronyms are everywhere. Perl is a programming language that stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. Most of us have heard of HTTP, but probably half or less know that it stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. A more specialized one is SOAP, which is Simple Object Access Protocol (XML, or extensible markup language, protocol).

It helps to know the meaning of certain acronyms in your field of study, because it aids your understanding and comprehension. It's a mental shortcut also, so that instead of remembering what AIDS stands for( Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome ), you just know what it is. Now that you know a bit more about acronyms, I will leave you with one that you will have to decipher, and shows my gratitude to you: TYVM.