"PIN"

[Dan Goncharoff]

I am pretty sure they can do better than 1976 for PIN.

DanG

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at sussex.ac.uk> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at SUSSEX.AC.UK>
> Subject:      Re: "PIN"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --On den 12 augusti 2010 14:26 +0000 Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
>> As the frequency of the redundant term "PIN number" also suggests, the
>> basis of the acronym, pretty recently coined, has become opaque.
>
>
> Rather than concluding that it's become opaque, I'd hazard a guess that
> it's always been opaque.  When banks introduced them, they wanted to
> introduce the acronym, but to use it in their materials would be confusing,
> since the reader couldn't be expected to know what it meant, and an acronym
> for an unfamiliar concept is probably doubly hard to learn.
>
> The OED backs this up.  The first example they have for PIN is:
> 1976 Lincoln (Nebraska) Star 14 July 2 (advt.) Personal Identification
> Number (P.I.N.)..(any 4 numbers of your choosing).
>
> And the first example for PIN number comes from an earlier advert:
> 1976 Lincoln (Nebraska) Star 2 May 11A/2 (advt.) Choose your own *PIN
> number when you establish your Money Service account.
>
> So, it seems to have been bound for pleonasm from its birth...
>
> Lynne
>
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
> Director of English Language and Linguistics
> School of English
> Arts B348
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QN
>
> phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
> http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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