Is ‘Acronym’ a four-letter word?

How often do you read online messages… both in IRC/Chat and on message boards and see these acronyms that you have no idea what they mean? Many people are clued into things like LOL, ROFL (and variants ROTFL and ROTFLMAO), but what about IAC? IANAL? ISTR? MRD? Even the Acronym Finder doesn’t have the last one as used in chat.

Now, if everything is working, if you move your mouse over any of the acronyms above, you should see “bubble help” with the spelled out version, if you browser supports such things, but MRD may be a little confusing.

Mandy Rice-Davies was famous in Britain for having (supposedly) had an affair with Lord Astor during the “Profumo Affair”. When told that Lord Astor denied even meeting her, she retorted, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” In some circles, MRD is used as a response to being told what some third party said meaning that it was said in one’s own self-interest, regardless of whether it is true or not… adjust the pronouns (’he’) as necessary to fit the situation: The cigarette companies have said smoking does not cause cancer? MRD!

Other confusing acronyms? List them here!

This entry was posted on July 8, 2006 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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