Do You Really Know What These Terms Mean? – Dale’s Daily Data

If you do a lot of texting – it’s something you do all the time – you use abbreviations for common terms or phrases to save time and character space in your message.  LOL, BRB, GR8.  Those are abbreviations but there are other abbreviations in our language that have become accepted words.  They’re acronyms.  You know what they mean, but do you really know what they mean?

We know what a tip is.  After a meal, we give a little extra money to a waiter when they give us extra good service.  But it doesn’t make any sense to give the tip after the meal, because tip is an acronym for “to insure promptness.”  So we should give a tip before the meal “to insure promptness.”

We know a cop is a police officer.....but it stands for constable on patrol.

We know what radar is – it’s something cops use to catch speeders.  Radar stands for radio - detection and ranging.

Laser stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

And scuba stands for self contained underwater breathing apparatus.

AWOL is a military term – absent without leave.

Snafu – another military term – situation normal – all fouled up.

Some phrases we use – we know what they mean – but they don’t really make sense.

If you fall head over heels for a girl – you’re crazy about her.  But think about it.  We spend most of our waking hours with our head over our heels.  The correct term is heels over head.  It first appeared in 14^th Century literature to mean doing a somersault but over the years it got switched by authors who didn’t think about what they were writing.

Can you think of any other acronyms?

SOURCE:  about.com