# Strained acronyms
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 13, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883 "2011-07-13T16:17:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/21 "2011-07-14T15:56:41Z")
> [@](#):
>
> What? Who came up with the inscription? PETA? A disgruntled PETA employee?
It says “boycott PETCO”, not “boycott PETA”.
And I’m surprised nobody has mentioned **INTERCAL** , which stands for **C** omputer **L** anguage **w** ith **N** o **P** ronounceable **A** cronym.
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### Author:  [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/22 "2011-07-14T16:13:05Z")
Along those lines, there’s TWAIN, which supposedly stands for “ **T** echnology **W** ithout **A** n **I** nteresting **N** ame”.
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### Author:  [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/23 "2011-07-14T16:34:57Z")
And the now defunct PCMCIA slot on laptops, anecdotally: “People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms”
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/24 "2011-07-14T16:57:42Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#):
>
> And the now defunct PCMCIA slot on laptops, anecdotally: “People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms”
Actually, it stands for “Personal Computer Memory Card International Association”, but it was backronymed to make the joke derivation. Not quite the same thing, though.
I’m using a piece of genealogical software called the “Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System”, whose tortured acronym is GRAMPS.
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### Author:  [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/25 "2011-07-14T17:06:07Z")
I saw a guy in a PETA t-shirt a few weeks back. Underneath the acronym it said:
**P** eople **E** ating **T** asty **A** nimals.
I laughed. And then went back to eating my wings.
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### Author:  [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/26 "2011-07-14T18:01:39Z")
[Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing](http://www.angryflower.com/modoke.gif)
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2011, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/27 "2011-07-14T19:32:36Z")
To me, the worst type of acronym is one like F.A.I.R.
That’s a liberal group that looks for bias in reportng, usually by the Fox network. What does F.A.I.R. stand for, you ask? “Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting.”
Wait… the WORD “fairness” is part of the acronym “FAIR”? That’s an unbelievably clunky acronym. Obviously, the acronym came first, before thefounders had figured out what it stood for.
To make it worse, they’re actually using “in” to get the “I” in “FAIR.” Sorry, in my book, you either use every word or else you skip all the little words. You can’t skip “and” but include “in.”
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### Author:  [@bahia\_hombre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bahia_hombre)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/28 "2011-07-15T02:20:47Z")
> [@USCDiver](#):
>
> The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), AKA Fannie Mae and her brother The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), AKA Freddie Mac
Oh geez, yes…non-pronounceable initialisms turned into cutesy people names…ugh.
Here in FL, the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) came to be referred to as “Swiftmud”; now most people just use the ‘word’ Swiftmud in communications and couldn’t even tell you what it stands for. And of course newcomers have to wonder what the heck it means when they first hear it. Something to do with landslides? In Florida?
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### Author:  [@Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Metal_Lotus)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/29 "2011-07-15T06:37:16Z")
Up here in Canada, back in the 1990’s a newly formed right wing party actually had the name
**C** onservative **R** eform **A** lliance **P** arty
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### Author:  [@Lobelia\_Overhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobelia_Overhill)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/30 "2011-07-15T18:06:54Z")
“bump” (when used on a message board) supposedly standing for **B** ring **U** p **M** y **P** ost
no it doesn’t! It doesn’t stand for anything, it’s just the word bump being used to keep the thread active! not everything is an acronym!!
:mad:
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### Author:  [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/31 "2011-07-15T18:31:41Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> To me, the worst type of acronym is one like F.A.I.R.
>
> That’s a liberal group that looks for bias in reportng, usually by the Fox network. What does F.A.I.R. stand for, you ask? “Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting.”
>
> Wait… the WORD “fairness” is part of the acronym “FAIR”? That’s an unbelievably clunky acronym. Obviously, the acronym came first, before thefounders had figured out what it stood for.
>
> To make it worse, they’re actually using “in” to get the “I” in “FAIR.” Sorry, in my book, you either use every word or else you skip all the little words. You can’t skip “and” but include “in.”
FWIW ( 😛 ) There’s a whole host of self-referential acronyms in computing…GNU is Gnu’s Not Unix. So having the fairness in FAIR might be intentional.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/32 "2011-07-15T18:46:31Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#):
>
> FWIW ( 😛 ) There’s a whole host of self-referential acronyms in computing…GNU is Gnu’s Not Unix. So having the fairness in FAIR might be intentional.
And Linux is asserted to stand for “Linux is not Unix” - although this seems somewhat dubious.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/33 "2011-07-15T19:00:06Z")
My favorite strained acronym goes back to the 1960s – a computer-driven probe for studying whales to be called **MOBY-DIC** , which stood for Motorized Observation Biotelemetry Yacht-Data Integration and Control. It was in my _How and Why Book of Computers and Robots_. I suspect that it never got beyond the conceptual stage, because I haven’t been able to find anything on it in the years since. And in the 1960s they were nowhere _near_ the technical capaility of building an autonymous system like that.
As far as real strained acronyms go, my favorite is **CLEO**. the particle detector that went along with **CESR** , the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, an electron-positron annhilation chamber. They clearly picked the name because a.) it is the mate to CESR, just as Cleopatra was to Julius Caesar; and b.) they figured that someone could make up an acronym involving “Cornell” with CLEO, and they couldn’t do that if they named it PORTIA. Except that no one ever did come up with an acronym, so they threw up their hands in surrender and said it never was supposed to be an acronym. Right.
> **[CLEO (particle detector)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLEO_(particle_detector))**
>
> CLEO was a general purpose particle detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), and the name of the collaboration of physicists who operated the detector. The name CLEO is not an acronym; it is short for Cleopatra and was chosen to go with CESR (pronounced Caesar). CESR was a particle accelerator designed to collide electrons and positrons at a center-of-mass energy of approximately 10 GeV. The energy of the accelerator was chosen before the first three bottom quark Upsilon resonance CL...
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### Author:  [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/34 "2011-07-15T19:01:46Z")
EVIL (Every Villain Is Lemons) was a short-lived gang of evildoers, consisting of ManRay, The Dirty Bubble, and Barnacle Man in the Sponge Bob series.
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### Author:  [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2011, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/35 "2011-07-15T22:34:29Z")
[I’m So Meta, Even This Acronym](http://www.xkcd.com/917/).
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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2011, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/36 "2011-07-16T00:02:43Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> There’s Calvin’s club GROSS, which IIRC stands for **G** et **R** id **O** f **S** tupid girl **S**.
I believe it stood for Get Rid Of SLIMY Girls. Believe it or not, some feminist group objected. :rolleyes:
And for my own contribution to the thread, a few years ago there was a sex worker’s advocacy group called COYOTE, Call Off Your Tired Old Ethics.
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### Author:  [@inkling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inkling)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2011, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/37 "2011-07-16T00:34:03Z")
Years ago, at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, there was a contest among the staff to name a new train that would carry the visitors through a number of habitats to see all the animals. A disaffected employee turned in an entry without a name on it, just WGASA writ large. The people in charge of the contest loved it - it sounded all African and as far as they could tell it didn’t mean anything in any language. The train is still called Wgasa Line to this day.
But it stands for “Who Gives A Shit Anyway.”
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### Author:  [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/38 "2011-07-16T03:26:55Z")
S.H.I.E.L.D.
S.W.O.R.D.
and
U.N.C.L.E.
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### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/39 "2011-07-16T04:20:32Z")
**M** others **O** pposed to the **O** ccult
I swear the writers must have gotten it from somewhere, and not just made it up.
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### Author:  [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strained-acronyms/588883/40 "2011-07-16T04:25:37Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> DAMM – Drunks Against Mad Mothers.
>
> I’ve always liked FLEASWTRACENPAC – Fleet Antisubmarine Warfare Training Center Pacific. (I pronounce it ‘flee-swuh-trassen-pak’. I don’t know how they actually say it.)
Oh we have a winner. That’s gotta be the most ridiculous acronym I’ve ever seen. :eek:
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