Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s xkcd has three characters unpacking initialisms and acronyms, in eccentric or ridiculous ways:

#1989

It starts with IMHO — in my H opinion — for which H originally stood for humble, but has apparently shifted to honest for many, under the influence of TBH to be honest.

Then a silent G (not graphic) in the acryonym GIF, where the usual controversy is over the pronunciation, /g/ or /ǰ/.

Then some bizarrie: swallowing for shaking in SMDH — what on earth does MDH then stand for, if not my damn head? — and giantess or genitals for god in OMG (over my giantess?, on my genitals?, like a testicular oath).

Then a controversy that has nothing to do with initials or acronyms: is the dress black and blue or white and gold?

And what to do with SQL? Initialsm? Acronym? If the latter, how pronounced?

Then another non-alphabetic controversy, and another bash at OMG.

This entry was posted on May 4, 2018 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Abbreviation, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.