Nixon’s team did not employ the acronym “CREEP”; the press did. William Safire wrote that in coming up with the name, the Nixonites did think about what unpleasant acronyms their enemies might invent but CREEP simply escaped their attention. They decided that CRAP was in too bad taste for the mainstream media and CREP too effete. Their problem in the first place was that they did not wish to highlight the unpopular Spiro Agnew but that a name like “Nixon for President” would have seemed to be tossing their vice president overboard. “Committee to Re-Elect the President” seemed at the time like a clever solution to the problem.
I’ve always gotten a giggle over MENSA, which means stupid in Spanish.
“Mensa” is not an acronym or an abbreviation.
I always liked KIA (Killed In Action).
I wonder if their ad firm asked them to consider a name change.
I doubt it. K.I.A. isn’t so much a part of the public consciousness to be a problem.
That should have been just the boys’ version. The girls’ version could have been, say, the Varied Approaches for Girls In Need Act.
Not to mention, it’s always an initialism and never an acronym (i.e., you say “kay eye ay,” not “kee uh”).
Either there are two schools using these abbreviations or I work at the school you attended. We’ve since renamed the department “Comparative Literature and Languages” and use CLL as its abbreviation. I don’t know why we stuck with the old abbreviation for as long as we did…
Also in Seattle, we have the SHAG. - Senior Housing Assistance Group. They run TV ads all the time telling people how SHAG can help.