Acronymic Mockery, Folk Acronyms

[Mark Mandel]

BritPet. Oh, the French would have fun with that one!

I suppose it's no worse than "bee-pee"... Yes, it is.

m a m

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 7:47 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> At 6:30 PM -0400 6/13/10, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >Department of Lost Causes
> >
> ><irony>And you're really going to call them acronyms, not
> >initialisms?</irony>
> >
> >(Sigh.) Even I have trouble pronouncing /bp/ as an acronym, rather than
> the
> >initialism /'bi:'pi:/ = "bee-pee".
> >
> >On second thought, /bp/ does sound suggestive of a bubble of oil squeezing
> >its way out into the ocean.
> >
> >Mark Mandel
>
> Well, one suggestion for their public relations staff might be to
> trade in their now besmirched "BP" initialism for something more
> customer-friendly, such as the clipronym "BritPet" (with a bulldog as
> their mascot).  I think that would be almost as effective as my
> earlier thought that they should replace Tony Heyward as apologist in
> chief with Hugh Grant, who has some experience at this.
>
> LH
>
> >
> >On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Mark Peters <markpeters33 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >>  Sigh. Maybe this will defunk my message:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  Hey folks,
> >>
> >>  I'm writing a column this week on what I'm calling Acronymic Mockery, a
> >>  form of folk acronym,
> >>  specifically, how people are saying that BP really stands for Bungled
> >>  Plugjob, Brazen Polluters,
> >>  Beyond Punishment, etc. I'm trying to get as many other examples as I
> can
> >>  too. I've found
> >>  plenty involving the CIA, FBI, NRA, and NFL, such as the well-known No
> Fun
> >>  League and
> >>  People Eating Tasting Animals (PETA). Any other examples come to mind?
> This
> >>  isn't really
> >>  about folk acronyms proposed as etymology, but what the hell, if
> there's a
> >>  not-so-well-known
> >>  example, I'd welcome that too.
> >>
> >>  If anyone knows of an article about this, that tip would be
> particularly
> >>  appreciated. I found a
> >>  couple old ones in the Journal of American Folklore, but there must be
> >>  more. Thanks!
> >>
> >>  Mark
> >>
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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>

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