Tag Archives: acronyms

The Baboon Congress, Words

The Mystery of S.A.L.T.

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in Robbindsale.

A couple of weeks ago in mid-August, I noticed something on our kitchen wall calendar penciled in on Wednesday morning, “SALT.” It is in my writing, and is apparently an acronym for something I wanted to attend. On checking further, it also appears in mid-September, mid-October, November, and December. I have been racking my brain, and I have NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS. I’ve hunted through the various little “rat-piles” that lie around the house for leaflets announcing various events. I’ve looked through old emails and through my list of “Favorites”.  And I finally entered S.A.L.T. into my search engine to see if something rang a bell. Here’s most of what showed up:

  • Salina
  • Speech Application Language Tags
  • State and Local Taxation
  • Strategic Arms Limitation(s) Talks/Treaty
  • Short and Long Term
  • spending a lot of time
  • Serum Alanine Aminotransferase
  • Salt and Light Television
  • Southern African Large Telescope
  • Supporting Arms Liaison Team
  • Sloping Agricultural Land Technology
  • Special Altimeter
  • Society for Applied Learning Technology
  • Subscriber Access Line Terminal
  • Save A Life Today
  • Skin-Associated Lymphoid Tissue
  • Same As Last Time
  • Seminars About Long-term Thinking
  • Seminars About Long Term
  • Society of American Law Teachers
  • Sloping Agriculture Land Technology
  • Student Action Leadership Team
  • Scottish Association for Language Teaching
  • Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching
  • Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts
  • Subscriber’s Apparatus Line Tester

Although some are interesting, none of these seems be what I was thinking of attending, but it’s kind of refreshing to know they exist.

I’m pretty sure it’s nothing urgent, or I would have remembered it!

What’s been the most crucial thing you completely forgot?

Words

Symptomatic Chronic Re-titling And Brain Baffling Linguistic Exercises (SCRABBLE)

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I admit to having Compulsive Acronym Tendencies (CAT).

That is, when I encounter something that interests me, I tend to get drawn into a cycle of First Letter Observation And Transfer (FLOAT), re-arranging the Name Of The Entity (NOTE) until the first letters of that name Spell Another Word Depicting Unanticipated Semantic Tendencies (SAWDUST) of that thing.

Having this condition all too often leaves me with a feeling of Helplessly Arranging Titles Endlessly (HATE),  and if I had to give it a name I’d go with Involuntary Titular Series Unit Composition Key Syndrome (ITSUCKS).

Really.   Acronyms are the only thing the military does that I might actually enjoy.

For instance, if you’re at a party and you happen to tell someone that you’ve got a condition where you Mentally Examine And Switch Linguistic Expressions Serially (MEASLES), they tend to suddenly Forget Leaving Elements Elsewhere (FLEE).

And when I resolve to stop doing it, like So Many Other Knowledge Indulgent, Noxious Games (SMOKING), this bad habit of mine is made worse by the Internet, which seemingly was built to keep open the Possibility Of Relapse Narrative (PORN) by providing things like the online Acronym Finder.

I was reminded of this when Wes mentioned in the comments section of yesterday’s post that his date and his dancing at a the high school prom made him a BMOC, which he used to mean “Big Man On Campus”.

But all you have to do is go to the Acronym Finder to discover it also represents the British Motorcycle Owners Club, the Basic Medical Officer Course, the Battle Management Operations Center, and the Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad Committee, among other things.

So It Goes, Huh?  (SIGH).

What’s your favorite word game?