Abbreviation embarrassments but witty sometime!
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Abbreviation embarrassments but witty sometime!
By HARISH MONGA DIDO
I feel nowadays abbreviations are becoming more and more popular because of the social media and the possible reason is that our current lifestyle places importance on being fast and patience is slowly fading away. No doubt, using abbreviations can make us faster but it creates confusion in our texts and short messages or sometime amusing.
David Crystal has countered the claims that short form has a deleterious effect on language with numerous scholarly studies with the use of abbreviations among students in homework and tests
Have you ever been confused with the abbreviations or felt embarrassments on knowing the real meaning? The abbreviations are used to easy pronounce a number of words or phrases in a shortened form used in place of the whole word but sometime they are so funny, one cannot forget in his life and sometime laugh when comes to mind.
Not only this, even small errors or miscalculations can lead to significantly greater official embarrassments if it is discovered that there was no willful disregard for evidence or directives involved. But sometimes, you can’t help feeling the urge to laugh. If you allow yourself to laugh during serious moments, you may end up accidentally offending someone. At the same time, the abbreviations embarrassments are witty sometime.
There is one abbreviations “etc.” which is used to avoid giving a full list, looked odd to my boss when written in full form ‘etcetera’. But otherwise, ETC has 64 definitions – Education Training Center, Education the Children and so on.
There are certain abbreviations which make you to laugh all the time. The Punjab Technical University is abbreviated as PTU and when it was bifurcated in its jurisdiction, the other PTU was named as Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University and abbreviated as MRS PTU – in funny words wife of PTU.
The short form of Multi-purpose Indoor Sports Stadium was MISS but it became fore humorous and hilarious when the invitation was extended that Governor to inaugurate MISS.
I have seen an officer of the rank of Assistant Secretary given the department of Sugar was given the contraction ASS – Assistant Secretary Sugar. The junior officer used to feel embarrassed when the file went from him to the assistant without putting ‘full stop’ in the shortened words. But he used to make a request to every new senior officer to mark him every note with word ‘Sugar’ in the bracket as AS (Sugar).
Another popular ellipsis for Indian Administrative Service – IAS was given the full form as ‘I Am Sorry’ when a bureaucrat became famous for not doing the work of anyone going to him with a reference and getting the stereotype reply – I Am Sorry.
The priority treatment was always for VIP – Very Important Persons but it was funnier when one of my friends invented to say VOP – Very Ordinary Persons.
The other day while talking about the airlines, someone said, PIA – Pakistan International Airlines is actually Please Inform Allah and AI – Air India stands for Already Informed.
Recently, when I entered one of the very senior officers of railways, on the engagement board, it was written SMAC meeting fixed for so and so date. For a moment I thought that since Punjab is under the grip of drugs, there might be spelling mistake of smack – a powerful and addictive substance but what the railways have to do with the meeting. Perhaps, some people might be smuggling through the rail net work but I could not help laughing when I was told the actual meaning and purpose of meeting – SMAC – Subsidiary Multi Agency Centre for which railway is planning to set up a mechanism for intelligence sharing and disseminating among them especially Intelligence Bureau.
Some others like BOSS – Built On Self Success, BMW-Big Money Waster, LIVE – Learning Important Values Everyday and LOVE stands for Loss of Valuable Energy are also amusing and MBA – Master of Bad Administration.
Frankly speaking, if the origin of abbreviations is the result of space constraints and now, why not time constraints and I feel more abbreviations would increase in coming time, which helps in writing repeatedly used words or technology or systems etc.
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