Short takes: INITIALISM

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:17 AM -0400 3/31/10, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 6:01 AM -0400 3/31/10, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>As the discussion about txting progressed, I began wondering about the
>>use of acronyms and initialisms /as nomenclature/. OED gives Feb 1943
>>issue of American Notes & Queries as the earliest source, Wiki pins the
>>Bell Labs as coining the term in the same year--sounds plausible, but
>>not definitive.
>>
>>But initialisms go back further. OED cites back to 1899.
>
>Not counting "O.K." and other jocular abbreviations from that period,
>as documented in detail by Allen Walker Read, I assume.  Possibly
>O.K. is the only one from those years to have survived (as opposed to
>e.g. "K.Y." for 'know yuse', i.e. 'no use', and others of that kind),
>but one of my favorites (as posted here a few years back) is "b4" for
>'before'.
>
To expand a bit--this is the context for the alphanumeric B4 code,
courtesy of AWR's papers on the shootout at the "O.K." corral
appearing as Chapters 10-15 of PADS [Publications of the American
Dialect Society] 86, and discussed in my ads-l posting of 6/28/02

 From a poem reprinted in 1832, "To Miss Catherine Jay, of Utica":

Oh KTJ is far B4
All other maids IC;
Her XLNC I adore
As a lovely NTT.

Other "laconics" AWR cites from the popular press of the 1830s
(besides "K.Y." for 'know yuse' and "O.K." for 'all korrect') were
"K.G" for 'know go', "O.W." for 'oll wright", and "N.S." for 'nuff
said.' The first appearance of the three R's (for Readin', Ritin',
and Rithmetic) also stems from the 1830s.  And this was before txt
msgs became popular...

LH

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