Acronym Angst Part II

When I first learned there’s a website called AcronymFinder that has more than five million acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms (say what?), I broke out in a sweat and stopped just short of losing my lunch.  I am not a big fan of acronyms, and I would never “friend” one, especially ACE which stands for 361 different things. Yikes!

At the risk of being labeled an acronymophobic (I just put that in to drive the spell checker crazy), I delved further into which parts of society tended to fall into the abyss of acronym abuse.  I was surprised to find that only five of the 361 meanings for ACE fell into the categories of “chat,” slang and pop culture. Organizations and schools had a whopping 159, military and government 91, business and finance 83, science and medicine 70 and IT 55. Don't tell AcronymFinder, but this breakdown doesn't add up to 361, which proves that staring at three letters too long makes your lose your bond with numbers.

I suppose ACE is clever, because it implies you are good at something, but even ASE stood for more than 100 things.  I was afraid to look up how many meanings there were for the acronym ASS.

There are actual whole words out there, people, not just capital letters, and they actually mean something without having to figure them out. If you’re not like me and like acronyms, I’d love to hear your favorites. I promise to keep an open mind. Yeah, right.