Unfortunate acronyms

[Matt N]

Hi guys. In an increasingly internet-driven world, the humble acronym has become ever more prevalent. People like to abbreviate things, and I’ve noticed that the theme park enthusiast community seems particularly fond of a good acronym; from TCAAM to TWODW, TowersStreet alone has a fair few acronyms of varying levels of complexity! But sometimes, acronyms can be slightly… unfortunate, giving off unintended connotations. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; what are some examples of particularly unfortunate acronyms you’ve seen?

I’ll get the ball rolling with a suggestion of mine.

The catalyst for me making this thread was a lecture on Time Series Forecasting I had at university earlier. One of the topics we covered was Adaptive Response Rate Single Exponential Smoothing… but because this is quite long and STEM loves a good acronym, it was frequently abbreviated to ARRSES. Our lecturer didn’t repeat the acronym, but there were still plenty of instances of ARRSES littered throughout the lecture slides!

But I’d be keen to known what are some unfortunate acronyms you’ve seen?

 

[DanJB]

Not really an acronym, but the ordering of bullet points in a presentation by HR summed up my thoughts on it pretty well:

 

[pluk]

We have People Development Officers, known as P.D.O.s, which is obviously sounded out as Pee-D-oh-s to annoy them.

 

[Benzin]

The constant use of an acronym for Command Points in Warhammer is quite unfortunate.

 

[Jonathan]

"The Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society." Erm, one drawback with that - the abbreviation is C.L.I.T.O.R.I.S.

Ah, good old Red Dwarf...

 

[DanJB]

Now there‘s an idea for the Nemesis protestors signs

 

[Burbs]

I hate acronyms so am part of a group called the Campaign Against Acronyms, or the CAA for short.

I’ll get me coat.

(Yes I know it’s an initialisation and not an acronym.)

 

[Danscott22]

Wicker Man's RAP queue once had the following words in a vertical line (think it's been changed now though) - Ride Access Pass Entrance

 

[Jonathan]

Wicker Man's RAP queue once had the following words in a vertical line (think it's been changed now though) - Ride Access Pass Entrance

Yeah, I think they changed that one pretty quickly!

 

[Danscott22]

Yeah, I think they changed that one pretty quickly!

They did, I just can’t believe nobody that had checked it had noticed what it was spelling out

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I came across an incredibly unfortunate email address yesterday at work, which I REALLY want to share, but cannot risk breaching GDPR.

The person was clearly born before email addresses were a thing and I feel forever sorry for them.

Also not an acronym. Whip me.

 

[Zeock]

This is probably an initialism, but there was an anti-pornography group called Women Against Pornography, or WAP for short.