12 Acronyms You’ve Never Really Cared to Learn the Meaning Of
When an invention or phrase is both useful and unwieldy, one solution is to turn that sucker into an acronym. If it’s one you can say out loud like a word, even better. Some acronyms are so useful, common and perfect, though, that nobody ends up remembering what they stand for at all.
Here are 12 of those, some of which you might have just assumed were words themselves…
USB
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Unless you’re in IT, you’re not gonna have much luck asking coworkers if they have a “Universal Serial Bus” charger.
SPF
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Depending on your degree of paleness, an acronym that can have serious effects on your health. For the Irish among us, we’re walking down the aisle to find the military-grade Sun Protection Factor.
URL
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Given that it’s already a techy acronym, you’d be right to assume it stands for an absolute monster of a mouthful. “Uniform Resource Locator” sounds more like one of the final names in a movie’s credits.
RSVP
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Long and French? Yeah, an acronym was the right choice to replace “repondez s’il vous plait,” meaning “please reply.” Which means that “Please RSVP!” translates into the more desperate sounding “PLEASE REPLY, PLEASE!”
GMO
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You might not know what it means, just that it’s bad… maybe? Saying the whole phrase, “Genetically Modified Organism,” is definitely less appetizing.
GIF
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It stands for “Graphics Interchange Format,” but that absolutely won’t convince me to pronounce it as “giff.”
PS
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Pretty straightforward here: “post script.” Definitely does lack a little poetry, though. Similar vibe to “ADDENDUM: I love you.”
ZIP
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Not entirely a happy accident and a bit of a backronym since the Post Office wanted a fast, efficient sounding word. Nevertheless, it does indeed stand for Zone Improvement Program.
SCUBA
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Now we’re getting into the ones that have fully ascended to wordom in their own right. Like SCUBA, which stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.
LASER
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Didn’t know one of the American Gladiators was rocking an acronym, did you? LASER stands for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.”
SWAT
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FUN FACT: You’re sending a “Special Weapons And Tactics” team to the house of that guy who beat you in an online game!
TASER
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Speaking of SWAT, the word taser is also, in fact, an acronym, and for a thoroughly delightful group of words: Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle. It’s a science-fiction story that the inventor of the taser loved as a kid. A great honor: immortalizing your favorite novel with the name of something that will someday make protesters convulse and urinate themselves.