I’m gonna say it cause it needs to be said 
Because people change that to PENNis TURNPIKE and PENiS TURNPIKE.
I think it is just an old form abbreviation - I remember “Penna Dept of Agriculture” approvals on various food containers from my MN (Minnesota) childhood. So apparently it was the official Pennsylvania abbreviation at some point, and they still use it on their internal highway signs.
For some reason acronyms call to the gutter portion of my mind. I interact with people who occasionally refer to a type of therapy as CBT.
their mind: cognitive behavioral therapy
my filthy mind: cock and ball torture
I also do some work for a governmental agency. Whoo gal, do governmental agencies ever love to throw around some acronym soup! They had to issue me a laptop (can’t let me connect with my own, who knows what kinds of electronic cooties might bne on there). I get emails referring to it as my GFE –
their mind: government furnished equipment
my filthy one: girl friend experience
… and to get on the VPN, there’s a hardware dongle, a card reader, and I have to insert my magnetic-stripe card into the reader. It’s referred to as my PIV card –
their mind: personal identity verification
my filthy one: penis in vagina
Not only am I not a fifth grader, I wasn’t that kind of fifth grader to begin with. Maybe I’m finally becoming a fifth grader or something.
dupe / nm
Yes, this. Before the USPS came up with official two letter state abbreviations in 1963, Pennsylvania used Penna.
It’s not like cock and ball torture couldn’t change a person’s behavior. Or at least how they walk.
And, dammit, we’re a COMMONWEALTH not a state. :mad:
I beg to differ.
Emphasis mine.
And to be clear, they have “commonwealth” in their names, but as legal entities, they are correctly described as states.
Not only that, but the constitution requires them to have a “republican form of government” (Constitution for the United States of America, Article IV, Section 4).
QFT
Sorry, I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. I was nitpicking over the idea we had a STATE abbreviation when we’re a Commonwealth. (I’m a Masshole, not a Rhody.)
QFF.
BTT, JFYI, PA & CA etc. = EM? EOD.
You are a state. You have “commonwealth” in your name but it’s an affectation. For all purposes it is a state. You may as well object to Texas being called a state, and insist that it is a republic.
And Vermont was the Vermont Republic prior to statehood as well. (Did you know that? I didn’t. I love learning about history. :))
Similarly, OBEE Credit Union used to stand for “Olympia Brewery Employees”, but the brewery’s been closed since 2003, and the membership is now open to anyone in the state.
A few years ago, I was in a group of neighbors when one asked what projects I was working on. (I was self-employed as a consultant.) I said I was doing a big project for the IT department of a major university. None of the 3 knew what IT stood for.
Texas is a republic and so are the other 49 states. See the section of the constitution I cited above.
And then there was the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in Toronto, whose abbreviation was pronounced as separate letters: “oh see eh”. Some time ago they added “and Design” to the name, and the abbreviation became OCAD, pronounced as one word, “oh-cad”. Then OCAD got upgraded to a full university in status, and the name became OCAD University (OCAD U). Apparently the letters OCAD no longer stand for anything.
In the sense that it functions as a representative democracy, not in the sense that it’s a fully sovereign republic as Texas was for 10 years.
Or just that it doesn’t have a monarchical form of government.