Acronyms like radar and scuba.
Acronyms are are a linguistic staple in many languages, but especially in English. As defined by Britannica, acronyms are "abbreviations formed from the initial letter or group of letters of two or more words," and most were made during the 20th century.
While most of us use many acronyms on the reg, we don't actually know we're doing it—let alone what they stand for. So, a curious linguist took to Reddit to pose the question: "What's an acronym many people know of but don't know what it stands for?"
It was soon clear that most people didn't know the proper definition for many acronyms, and many jumped in to fill in the blanks and share their knowledge. These are 31 commonly used acronyms, and what they stand for.
adam sandler scuba steve GIF Giphy
"Zip code (Zone improvement plan)." - 1intheHink
"RADAR (radio detection and ranging)." - Flimsy_Carpet1324
"Scuba: Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus." - CaffeinatedLystro
"SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging)." - SWO6
"LIDAR ( Light Detection and Ranging )." - Crashthewagon
"Most people use CAPTCHA daily and have no clue it stands for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart'." - Juliettecreamy
Robot Tech GIF by Patrick Hosmer Giphy
"3M (Minnesota mining and manufacturing)." - elkab0ng
"Laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." - naegele
"EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow)." - broncos_mcgee
"VANTA black. (Vertically Aligned Nano Tube Array!)" - ErinWalkerLoves
"LEGO - Leg Godt (Danish for "play well"). IKEA - Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd. The furniture company is named after its founder, his family farm, and his hometown in Sweden." - shonuff_1977
Dance Dancing GIF Giphy
"GEICO. Government Employees Insurance Company. Used to only insure government employees and family. Kinda like USAA (an initialism) only insures vets and dependents." - BloodyBucket
"PIN: Personal Identification Number." - maechtigerAal
"ATM: Automated Teller Machine." - Eli_Renfro
"VIN number: Vehicle Identification Number." - magster823
"RIP: rest in peace." - Ok-Curve-3894
Pouring Austin Powers GIF Giphy
"NECCO, as in NECCO wafers (the candy). New England Confectionary Company." - BipolarWoodNymph
"TASER: Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle." - BlueCenter77
"USA PATRIOT Act: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Requited to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." - jollyllama
"NASDAQ - National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations." - Nealski
Listing Times Square GIF by Nasdaq Giphy
"SNAFU. It sounds so innocuous, like 'ooops, got into a little snafu'. But it comes from army slang: 'situation normal, all f*cked up'." - sunbearimon
"Pakistan = Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindh, Baluchistan. ‘i’ was added for ease of pronunciation. It was convenient that pak also meant pure." - Steampunk007
"Modem - modulator-demodulator." - myDefiance
"CAT scan (computed axial tomography) which has since technically been shortened to CT (computed tomography). It’s what I do for a living. Anytime anyone asks what the CAT or CT stands for and I tell them, they look like I spoke another language." - Ok-Maize-284
medical school brain GIF Giphy
"CRISPR — Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Maybe many people don’t know of this acronym." - Hold-At-KAPPA
"A common one is GIF most people use it daily but don’t know it stands for Graphics Interchange Format." - Busy_Prize_950
"NASCAR. National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing." - Upper-Job5130
"HEPA- high efficiency particulate air." - shylowheniwasyoung
"HARIBO gummybears are invented by HAns RIegel from BOnn." - dschoni