The Wit’s Guide to Acronyms

Or, snafu normal all fouled up

Oct 12, 2023

*Joint Photographic Experts Group depicts Private Situation Normal All Fouled Up*

Most acronyms are less witty than WOTTY, as in a waste of time, thank you. Do you really need to string together the initials of a phrase and pronounce it as a word? Or even worse, not pronounce it as a word?

“An acronym is not just any set of initials. It applies only to those that are pronounced as words. MADD, DARE, NATO, and UNICEF are acronyms. FBI, CIA, and KGB are not. They’re just pricks.”
— George Carlin

Among initialisms, the worst is SME, for subject-matter expert. The definition of an expert specifies someone with advanced knowledge of a particular area, so the first two words are only there to confuse. Only a non-SME would dare ask what it stands for! And so it reveals the true purpose of most acronyms is not efficiency but officialcy.

“Can we not eliminate the redundancy from the acronym WASP? It’s not as if there were any BASPs. Doesn’t ASP convey precisely the same connotation with even more economy?”
— Christopher Hitchens

Which is why it’s good to remember that the military — an institution laden with hierarchy, redundancy, jargon, redundancy, codes, and more redundancy — invented the modern acronym. The word itself only dates back to the Second World War, before which anyone who went AWOL was just a deserter.

“Can you imagine him living in our own day, obliged to serve out his time as second in command to some dullard born-again acronym?”
— Jan Morris, ruminating on the heroism of Admiral Nelson

Politicians made things worse with backronyms, by which acronyms are reverse engineered in generally clumsy ways. The data journalist Noah Veltman maintained a rigorous database of bad acronym bills created by the U.S. Congress until 2013, including the End Government Reimbursement of Excessive Executive Disbursements (End GREED) Act and the Build America Bonds Extension for Rural and Urban Transportation and Highways Act (BABE RUTH) Act. That last one, he notes, has nothing to do with baseball.

“The best acronym is “moo” (meaning my opinion only). It’s the best moo.”
— Becca Laurie

Tech acronyming both more formal and less formal — no one is expected to know that JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, but everyone LOLs sometimes, as Rapid Eye Movement didn’t sing. And as Adam Gopnik famously realized, if you think it stands for “lots of love,” that’s AOK. (Though note that in AOK, the A stands for all, the O stands for all, and the K stands for correct, so maybe a double negative proves a positive?)

“Whenever I’m on my computer, I don’t type ‘lol.’ I type ‘lqtm’ — laugh quietly to myself. It’s more honest.”
— Demetri Martin

In the hands of a deft writer, the acronym can be made to sing. In his book Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier needed a shorthand for his problematic subject. He came up with “Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent,” and proceeds to explain how to unplug the BUMMER machine.

And the best way to defeat the acronymic bummer machine is to jam up the gears with a recursive acronym. Douglas Hofstadter pioneered this tactic in his book Godel Escher Bach, where he posits that GOD is a recursive acronym for GOD Over Djinn, where “the word ‘Djinn’ is used to designate Genies, Meta-Genies, Meta-Meta-Genies, etc.”

And so GOD is infinitely expandable and elevated with every expansion (GOD over Djinn over Djinn over and over), but at the same time every Djinn’s GOD is just the Djinn above them. So point that acronym at itself, stand back, exhale, and speak English.

“Recursive Acronyms— Crablike ‘RACRECIR’ Especially—Create Infinite Regress.”
— Douglas Hofstadter

Kudos — which obviously doesn’t stand for Kid Under Duress Offering Support — to Teddy for helping package up envelopes of Riposte Cards for my paying subscribers last week. Any stamps applied sticky side up are my fault, not his. If you’d like to support full youth employment and receive a monthly package of original, quip-based art postcards, upgrade today!

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“I don’t want you to think I’m not incoherent.”
— Harold Ross

Denial was in a dead heat with acronyms all week, but was ultimately denied. Let’s give it — and a suite of other abstractions — another chance.

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Issue 223 of GWQ — pronounced gwick by no one in particular — does have a soft spot for misguided attempts to find meaning via acronyms, like the idea that hobo stands for “homeward bound” and tip means “to insure promptness.” Shouldn’t it be ensure? Ah well, like my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting, it’s too good to check (out of the library, so please buy a copy). Lots of love out loud can be sent by tapping the ❤️ below.