Baseball lingo (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE



> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence Horn
> Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:47 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Baseball lingo
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Baseball lingo
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
> At 9:04 AM -0400 6/3/08, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >In last night's TV broadcast (Cox SportSouth network) of the
> regional
> >championship baseball game between the Univeristy of Georgia and
> >Georgia Tech, the commentator consistently used the term "R.B.I." to
> >refer to figures greater than 1--for instance, one player
> had "posted
> >ten R.B.I. in the tournament."  I don't recall having heard that
> >construction before.  I wonder whether the commentator
> regards "R.B.I."
> >as a mass noun or interpretes the initialism to represent
> "runs batted
> >in" as well as "run batted in."
>
> I know I've heard that, although it is rarer than RBIs.
> (Maybe even rarer than "ribbies".)  I interpret it in the the
> latter sense, as an initialism for 'run(s) batted in' rather
> than as a mass term.  I wonder if there are other examples of
> this when there's a standard initialism or acronym for a
> nominal phrase with internal plural ("runs batted in" as
> opposed to "run batted ins" in this case).  For example, if
> (counterfactually) a potato au gratin was familiarly known in
> the restaurant trade as a "PAG", might an order of two such
> potatoes be referred to as either "two PAGs" or "two PAG"?
> Or "BOT"/"BOTs" for 'books on tape' in library lingo?  Real
> live examples welcome.  (Of course only regular plurals need
> apply; the unmarked-plural form of "MIB" for 'Men In Black"
> doesn't count.)
>
> >
>

For "Attorneys General", I've seen "AGs", but never "AsG".
Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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