OED news

[Mark A. Mandel]

Larry wrote, rather hard-to-read-ly:

>>>>>
Somehow, I predict that one of the cited texters' abbreviations will
not survive as an acronym, despite its obvious pronounceability.
Know what I mean?

                               Oxford Dictionary adds tech jargon

                               - - - - - - - - - - - -
                               Associated Press

     [...]

                               "KWIM" is short for "Know what I mean?"
Then there are the
                               sign-offs: "BCNU" (Be seeing you) and
"BFN" (Bye for now).
<<<<<

I assume you're talking about the phonological equivalence "KWIM" = /kwIm/
= "quim" 'vulva'. "Quim" is obsolete; I'd bet not one American in a
thousand knows it. (Obviously the logophilous readership of ADS-L is not a
representative sample.) AAMOF, I kind of doubt that the AP writer or
his/her editors know it.

After writing the above, I checked the _AmHerDict_ 3/e to see how they
tagged it. They don't have it at all. They do list "fuck" and other current
vulgarisms, tagged "obscene".

                  Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist
            Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com