The Word Snoop by Ursula Dubosarsky Read Free Book Online

he invented a kind of language called New-speak, where the government used acronyms and abbreviations on purpose to hide what was really going on. Orwell had noticed that Nazi and Communist governments did this with some not-very-pleasant organizations like the SS ( S chutz S taffel, “protective squad”) and the NKGB ( N arodnyi K omissariat G osudarstvennoi B ezopasnosti, “People’s Commissariat of State Security”). He thought once a government starts using a lot of acronyms, it was definitely BN ( B ad N ews).
    But sometimes acronyms are JFF ( J ust F or F un). The novelist P. G. Wodehouse created a lovely, silly character called Bertie Wooster, who scattered ridiculous acronyms throughout his conversations, such as “I put my F in my H” (“I put my F ace in my H ands”) or “In my humble O” (“In my humble O pinion”). These are more like the acronyms used in text messages, e-mails and chat rooms. In fact, IMHO is one of the most commonly used!
    Sometimes, groups of people who use a lot of acronyms in their work forget that other people have no idea what they’re talking about. Every profession seems to have its own set of peculiar acronyms. But here’s a tip from the Word Snoop—don’t despair if you come across a really unusual acronym. Go to the Internet and look up an acronym-finder website, and it will explain unknown acronyms for you.
LLL (Latin, Latin, Latin)
    Funnily enough, a few of the really common acronyms we use in everyday life don’t even come from English but from Latin, the language of the ancient Romans. This is because Latin was used in schools and universities as a common language in Europe right up until at least the fifteenth century. So AM and PM, which you know mean “morning” and “afternoon,” actually stand for the Latin words A nte M eridiem and P ost M eridiem, meaning “before midday” and “after midday.”
    And PS, those two letters you put at the end of an e-mail or a letter when you want to add something extra, stands for P ost S criptum, which means “after writing.” Then there’s i.e. or i d e st, which means “that is”; and e.g. or e xempli g ratia, which means “for example.” And, of course, our old friend etc.— et c etera, which means “and the rest of them.”
    Now, what about AD and BC? Well, AD dates back to the sixth century AD, and is short for A nno D omini, “in the year of the Lord.” The “Lord” is the Christian leader Jesus Christ, who was determined to have been born in AD 1. It wasn’t until several hundred years later that people felt they wanted an acronym for all those centuries before AD. By then English was more popular than Latin, so BC simply stands for B efore C hrist. (No translation needed!)
Well-mannered acronyms
    AD and BC come from the Christian religion, but they’ve been used in many countries and cultures over the years, including non-Christian ones. More and more, though, you’ll see BCE and CE instead, which stand for B efore C ommon E ra and C ommon E ra. Some people like it better than AD and BC, because it doesn’t sound so religious. It’s still referring to the birth of Jesus Christ, of course, just not saying it OUT LOUD (shhh!).
    Another foreign language acronym that’s also rather polite is RSVP, which stands for the French R espondez S’ il V ous P lait, meaning “please answer.” This was adopted in English as a delicate way of reminding people that it’s good manners to answer the invitation, ORELSE!
Dot dot dot
    When acronyms were less common, it was usual to write them in capital letters with periods after each initial—like U.S.A. ( U nited S tates of A merica) or C.A.T. ( C omputed A xial T omography) scan. Nowadays, while the periods are more often left out, the capitals still remain—USA, CAT—to show it was once an acronym.
    Sometimes a word will become so common that both the periods and the capitals disappear, and hardly anyone remembers that it was ever an acronym. So