text message abbreviations used in speech!

[Charles Wells]

KISS has been around at least ten years.  It is in

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html

and also in the book The New Hacker's Dictionary mentioned therein.
Computer programs have been using this sort of thing for years, and some
are listed in the reference above.  Other examples are:

MIPS (millions of instructions per second, which makes its own plural)

and

MUNG (Mung Until No Good, which is recursive).

Science fiction fans also used a number of these acronyms in the 1950's and
probably before, originating in fanzines but spoken when they got together,
too.  I could probably dig out text references from the fifties and sixties
of some of these:

GAFIA:  Get away from it all, which became a verb gafiate.

TANSTAAFL:  There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.  (Unlike GAFIA, this
one I think originated outside s.f fandom.)

APA: Amateru press association.  I often heard the plural, apas

ESP: Extra sensory perception.  Originated outside sf fandom, I think.

There were others.  Even older is the originally military word SNAFU.    See

http://fanac.org/Fannish_Reference_Works/Fancyclopedia/index.html






>check out this link in the Times Online, thanks to Larry Urdang:
>
>If this isn't completely apocryphal (the evidence is on the order of
>"a friend of my cousin said") it's verrry interesting. Much like the
>stories of people writing in Palm-script on whiteboards in Silicon
>Valley.
>
>--Erin
>editor at verbatimmag.com
>
>>
>>          <a
>>href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-305830,00.html">Initial
>>reaction is kiss and make up</a></b>
>>        Text messaging has spread into business meetings in a bizarre
>>attempt to save time, research has found
>>



Charles Wells
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