NICU, PICU ( was: ob-gyn revisited)

[Neal Whitman]

When my father worked at a petroleum refinery, he and his coworkers called the Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit the fuck-you. Then there was the second such unit, the FCCU 2...

Neal

On Apr 2, 2012, at 1:14 PM, "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:

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> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: ob-gyn revisited (UNCLASSIFIED)
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> And when my son was sick in 2007, I learned about the acronyms "NICU"
> and "PICU" (neonatal ICU, and pediatric ICU), both pronounced as Mark
> describes below.
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
>> Mark Mandel
>> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 10:46 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: ob-gyn revisited
>>
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>> -
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: ob-gyn revisited
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
>> -
>>
>> At HUP (acronym, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania), the
> Medical
>> Intensive Care Unit and the Surgical Intensive Care Unit are known by
> their
>> acronyms, pronounced /'m=C9=AAkju:/ and /'s=C9=AAkju:/... the latter
> being
>> particularly infelicitous, to my mind, especially when my wife was
> spending
>> a lot of time there.
>>
>> Mark Mandel
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Victor Steinbok
> <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrot=
>> e:
>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> On the other hand, Departments of Ear, Nose and Throat can often be
>>> heard referred to as "ent" or "E.N.T.". Other
> abbreviations/initialism
>>> are often pronounced as separate letters--e.g., "O.R.", "E.M.T.",
>>> "I.C.U." (sorry, can't recall more than that on request--need to
> think
>>> more about that). But I've heard longer examples pronounced as words
>>> rather than initials. It could be that OBGYN is just short enough to
>>> fall into the former class.
>>>
>>>    VS-)
>>>
>>
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