By Linda Shaffer
I have to bring up this topic. Why? Over the course of our lives, things have gotten out of control. It’s possible that our grandparents and great-grandparents and their parents said the same damn thing. Acronyms have been around forever. Even the Romans used them. Apparently, humans love to invent words and glorious titles for people, places and things. Then they set about finding ways to abbreviate them. This is true of all people on our planet and their languages.
An acronym is formed from the first letters of a name. It uses capital letters, so it is called a high name. Sometimes these letters are mixed with other letters in the words. Confused? Me too. Let’s look at WASP. That is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. In 1933 Germany, the Gestapo was the secret state police. The term RSVP is based on the French words respondez s’l vous plait. Please respond. I’m told that in English this means “respond as soon as possible.” Not true.
The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) was founded in the 1920s, while some of our parents were still alive. Those three letters and two world wars brought with them a flood of new acronyms, because all governments have to find ways to abbreviate things. If you don’t know who FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) was, you’re probably not an old fart. His picture hung above my grandparents’ bed. They had eight children. There’s no acronym for this one.
We grew up with the USSR, CIA, CBS, NBC, ABC, CARE (originally the post-WWII Cooperative for Remittances to Europe, now the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere), and all sorts of intimidating things that sounded like codes. A James Bond movie would have introduced us to a whole new world of letters that meant things we didn’t know about. The same thing happened with the Korean and Vietnam wars. Some of these new acronyms have crept into our language. Radar (Radio Detecting and Ranging) is one of them. So is Sonar (Sound Navigation Ranging). Scuba? Of course. That stands for “Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.” Humvee? It’s a stretch to get to “highly mobile multipurpose vehicle on wheels.” If you don’t know what WIFI stands for, you’re probably like me. I had to look it up. It’s the first two letters of the word “Wireless Fidelity” combined for your enjoyment as this miracle of connectivity finds your internet for you. I suspect they ended up using this very popular term because the letters “W” and “F” were already taken. There are many acronyms that I can’t repeat here for obvious reasons. I’ll leave you to make your own list while I sit here and laugh.
There’s an old one I really like. CREEP. That was the Committee to Re-elect the President. It was a creation of Nixon’s think tank in 1972. When it caught on, they tried to change it to CRP, but they couldn’t get away with it. I don’t know about you, but neither of those sounds particularly cool to me. Just right.
OK. I like it. I use it a lot. According to the Associated Press, the word “okay” is not a good substitute. Everything is just “OK.” No periods. No commas, no messing around. There isn’t enough history to settle the argument about those two letters. But word lovers have been arguing about their history and relevance for years. How can you not like that? “OK” is my favorite acronym.
My least favorite name? POTUS. If you are unable or too lazy to pronounce the words “President of the United States of America,” I don’t think you should deserve any respect as a journalist or commentator. The person who leads this country deserves more than an acronym to describe what they stand for. No matter who holds that job, it is vital to each of us Americans and to the world we live in. Democracy is one of the few things we all have left that we can all be proud of. It doesn’t matter what your political leanings are. We’re all in it. We have to be in it, because it’s ours.
No, I didn’t get on a soapbox because I would have fallen off and not been able to finish this. Yes, I know some of you are thinking of new acronyms. Me? I’m too bad if I just pissed you off.
Have a great week, my friends!
