fresh off the boat

[victor steinbok]

I just did a quick search of the archives and noticed that one
initialism has not made it into ADS-L: "FTW". This one apparently has
multiple uses and multiple interpretations. Two of the most common
unpackings in internet explanatory sites are "For the Win" and "Fuck
the World".

Then, there is this headline from TPM today:

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION FTW!

The piece concerns "constitutional amendment being proposed in his
home state of Virginia that would allow states to overturn any federal
law by a vote of 2/3 of the states' legislatures." Somehow, neither of
the two definitions above appears to match the content (even allowing
for a substantial amount of snakiness on TPM's part).

Another unpacking is "WTF" in reverse--not sure how to interpret "WTF
in reverse", but that's the apparent intent. I've always interpreted
it as the same as WTF but in the affirmative. In any case, YMMV.

VS-)

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 5:57 PM, Michael Newman
<michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu> wrote:
>
> An interesting point is that FOB, along with subjects of other recent discussion (LOL and ROFL) have become acronyms as well as initialisms. Increasing numbers of my students are reporting acronym usage. [fɑb]. This happens with ROFL despite of course its blatant violation of spelling to speech mapping though not necessarily any phonotactics.
>
>
>
> Michael Newman

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