"PIN"

[Charles C Doyle]

I know we have discussed the redundancy of the commonly heard "PIN number"; but have we mentioned the fact that, paradoxically, a PIN (or PIN number) need not be a number at all?  That fact just struck me when I logged on to my university's library account:  There, when I am instructed to enter my PIN, what I type is a series of alphabetic characters, with nary a digit.

As the frequency of the redundant term "PIN number" also suggests, the basis of the acronym, pretty recently coined, has become opaque.

--Charlie

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