false acronymy

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

two episodes from the annals of false acronymy:

1.  at dinner on tuesday with three friends in the computational biz,
i was entertained by their story of a guy who stoutly maintained that
the name of the Unix operating system had an acronymic derivation --
not from "UNIplex operating and Computing System" (UNICS, later
shortened to Unix), attributed to Brian Kernighan, but from "Users'
Nighttime Information eXchange", the idea being that the system was
available at night for tty communication among the blind.  wonderfully
inventive.

2.  meanwhile, on alt.usage.english the story of w00t continues:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/browse_thread/thread/54a18858e0978e24/d6e7a7d959c621d4?lnk=raot

[Sara Lorimer] wrote:

  > Sara Lorimer wrote:

   > > Display name: <nokia.acco... at ntlworld.com> wrote:
    > >> w00t was originally an acronym for "we owned other team" but
used
    > >> 1337$p34|< for some of the letters(w00t instead of woot).

   > > That seems unlikely. "We owned other team! We owned other team!"
   > > doesn't sound like something anyone would say.

  > You're obviously not an online gamer then.

This is true. Are you? Have you heard or read players say "we owned
other team"?
I suspect that this is one of those thingummies -- false acronyms? --
like PHAT, TIPS, POSH, FUCK, and others that have come up here before.

.....

i suppose predictably, the discussion quickly turned to whether gamers
use "own" in the relevant sense.  they certainly do, but "we owned
other team" seems unlikely.  even "we owned the other team" isn't
especially likely, as opposed to "we owned them".  but the lure of
acronymic derivation is strong indeed.

arnold

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