TIPS

[Jonathan Lighter]

While Fox News was promoting "to insure proper service" (which would yield "TIPS), the older version of the tale, told to us as fact by our English teacher in 1959-60, involved "to insure promptness."

  At least that would result in the sensibly singular "TIP."

  BTW, another fake-ronym I reported from Fox News a few months ago was "SWAG."  And from elsewhere "POG(ue)."

  Now there's "PINGERS"  "People In Need of Graduation, Education, Relaxation and Sex (common slang at US military tech schools) :-)"  (The far-fetched elaboration alone shows it ain't real.)

  http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/PINGERS

  The word appears to have been applied originally to Air Force students or graduates of electronics school
  :
  http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.military/browse_frm/thread/25149250cc05298b/8033e5befd3d89ac?lnk=st&q=pinger+radar&rnum=55#8033e5befd3d89ac

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: TIPS
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At 7:47 AM -0700 7/3/06, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Jul 3, 2006, at 5:47 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
>>In a discussion about pennies, all three distinguished anchors on
>>_Fox & Friends_ have just
>>
>> 1. agreed the word "tips" comes from "to insure proper service,"...
>
>has anyone assembled an inventory of these mythacronyms?
>
>the wikipedia "false etymology" entry lists:
> fuck, git, golf, news, pom, posh, shit, tip
>
>ADS-L discussions have added at least:
> crud, gomer, hep, phat, wog
>(this list is undoubtedly incomplete)
>
>and i just came across
> daemon
>at: http://www.takeourword.com/TOW146/page4.html
>
>it would be nice to have these assembled, with some discussion of the
>history of each acronym (insofar as it is known), in a single place.
>it could even make an entertaining little book.
>
>maybe, of course, it's been done.
>
Possibly in Michael Quinion's book on POSH et al.

others in my collection (with etym(yth)ologies provided on request) include:

camp (or "originally" kamp)
cop
grunt
pimp
snob
wop

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