ex-acronyms

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, September 6, 2006 8:00 pm -0400 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
> At 12:54 PM -0700 9/6/06, Karl Hagen wrote:
>> Also note SAT (once "Scholastic Aptitude Test" then "Scholastic
>> Assessment Test", now another empty initialism), which the makers are
>> now calling the "SAT Reasoning Test" in full. That strikes me as being a
>> bit like "El Alamein" or "the hoi polloi", in that the fossilized
>> element is reduplicated.
>
> The locus classicus for which is, of course, "the La Brea Tar Pits",
> i.e. "the The Tar tar pits".
>

The Feedback column in New Scientist collected these for a while, calling
it RAS Syndrome:  Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome.

See:  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome>

A late Feedback column hitting the topic can be found at:
<http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg18524882.500>

Incidentally, the Feedback column is always good for some linguistic
curiosities.  A few years ago they were featuring "semiopathy" their term
for emotional readings of signage, such as "This door is alarmed".

tata,
Lynne


Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org