h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

anyone know any interesting acronyms?
what it stands for and what it does?

I'll go first

A.P.F.S.D.S

armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot

a 3 foot tungsten steel dart that punches a hole straight through armor then shatters, spraying the inside of the target with slivers of metal

my fave acronym is qango

quasi autonomous non government organisation

Fcuk? I find it more irritating. A bit of advertising designed to make a name for itself by trading on how close it is to a swear word?

I was a little confused for about the first five minutes. Then I settled down and made a mental note to never, ever buy their products (not that I did before, admittedly).

It's a habit I have- bad advert? On the Will Not Buy list. We used to have an actual list next to the TV.

Can't think of any excessive acronyms off hand.

I did see a t-shirt the other morning which said 'FCUK is offensive to us dyslexics, you CNUT' which made me chuckle for a moment. It's all a tad puerile though.

It was funny for about 5 minutes when they first thought of it...but to still be doing it 10 years later shows a singular lack of imagination.

RF

I wonder when they'll bring out the women only range of clothes... maybe called lsga
My fav acranimawhatsit, is
'Crude Recycled Animal Protein'.
Which is the sludge produced by using high pressure water hoses on animal carcuses to remove the very last bits of protein/meat, the sludge then being heated to evaporate the water leaving behidn teh protein/meat which can be made it to really nice tasty cuts of meat
It is my fav recycled protein, as the acranamawhatsit for Crude Recycled Animal Protein is actually a more accurate description of what it is than the actual wordsd themselves, it is, and tastes exactly like the acranamawhatsit letters would make one guess it would
There was briefly a washing powder called Krap 2000 but as that was an invented brand restricted to a project/branding exercise at our school in deepest darkest fenland, its probably not that well known. We had a company called RAB. (rent a butler ) which was mildly amusing as for a while it seemed to be, but mainly it ment we didn't have to produce an actual product
There are some nice acranmiwhatsits from physics; wimps and machos spring to mind (weakly Interacting Massive particles and err can't remember what Machos stood for My brain hurts I think I've too much CSF which is raising my ICP

Feckless Criminal Underclass Kit

Favourite acronyms...

JFGI

RTFM

Both of which I use quite frequently

I should imagine that Fcuk is still being used 10 years later because it is now more or less established as a brand trade mark, and, I guess, it works to increase their profile and hence raise sales.

Doesn't irritate me, doesn't offend me, it's blended into everything else now.


To be pedantic for a moment, isn't that just an abbreviation in post 1? An acronym is surely and abbreviation that actually makes a pronouncable word. http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci211518,00.html

My favourite acronym, being a sceincy type, is LASER

Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A word everyone knows and it's name also tells you how it works if you know enough physics

OK, so I guess it's an 'initialism' rather than an abbreviation but the point remains the same.

In the same vein: RADAR - RAdio Detection And Ranging

DAVE - digital audio visual entertainment
BANANA - build abolsutely nothing anywhere near anyone
SMIDSY - sorry mate I didn't see you (the standard car drivers' apology after trying to kill a biker).
POTS - plain old telephone sysyetm
SOAP - simple object access protocol
NIMBY
SNAFU

Related to SNAFU, is FUBAR which is also a good one.

fcuk stands for something concrete, but if it were done simply to offend, then maybe it would do just that. All words / acronyms are in a context and it is the context which defines them as offensive or not, not the word itself.

I like

UKW = You know who
GALA = Get a life ....

British Association of Plastic Surgeons

Copper Nano Tubes

Free the United Kingdom from Drugs and British Opposition to Metabolically Bisturbile Drugs

Against Animal Anger And Autocausal Abuse Atrocities in Zoos

My favourite is a bit Oz-specific

COAG

Council Of Australian Governments

http://www.coag.gov.au/about.htm

Very appropriate for a gathering of clots

A couple that are used in the IT industry mostly among user-support staff:

LART - Looser Attitude Readjustment Tool
PLEBKAC - Problem Lies Entirely Between Keyboard And Chair

I'm a DILLIGAF girl myself...

Do I Look Like I Give...

Or do you charge...?

Being pedantic back at Orcus: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/AMOOFL

And an interesting history:
http://jehovah.to/glos/12b_amoofls.html

TRiG.

fcuk (note small letters) stands for 'French Connection United Kingdom' and seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate abbreviation. This is equivalent to DKNY (Donna Karan New York) and what's wrong with that?

On the subject of FUBAR (what does the 'R' stand for - recognition?) a common one in healthcare is FUBAH BUNDY.

F