70 Fun Facts About Acronym

What does the 'A' in NASA stand for?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration; it runs ten field centres from its Washington headquarters.

'Scuba' began as an acronym for what?

It is now an 'anacronym', a word most people no longer recognise as an acronym.

The word 'laser' stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of what?

Theodore Maiman built the first one in 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories.

Which organisation coined the term RADAR in 1940?

Radio detection and ranging; like scuba it has since become a plain lowercase noun.

What does the 'so' in 'sonar' stand for?

Sound navigation and ranging; passive sonar listens, active sonar pings.

UNICEF originally stood for the United Nations International Children's what?

It has been officially the United Nations Children's Fund since 1953 but kept the old letters.

What does the 'S' in UNESCO stand for?

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; it has 194 member states.

OPEC was founded in 1960 in which city?

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries began with Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

GIF stands for Graphics Interchange what?

CompuServe's Steve Wilhite released it in June 1987; he insisted it be pronounced with a soft g.

The letters JPEG come from the name of what?

The Joint Photographic Experts Group; the format is a lossy compression method.

PDF stands for Portable Document what?

Adobe developed it in 1993 on top of PostScript; it is now ISO 32000.

What does the 'M' in HTML stand for?

Hypertext Markup Language defines the content and structure of web pages.

URL stands for Uniform Resource what?

Colloquially a web address.

Who came up with the name Wi-Fi?

It was picked from ten proposals as catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'; whether it means 'wireless fidelity' is disputed.

CAPTCHA is a contrived acronym for a Completely Automated Public what?

Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum and colleagues coined it in 2003.

ZIP in 'ZIP Code' stands for what?

The name was chosen to suggest mail zipping along faster.

The name Taser is a loose acronym inspired by which children's book?

Inventor Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, named it in 1974 after his childhood hero.

CARE, of CARE Package fame, originally stood for the Cooperative for American Remittances to where?

The first CARE Package went out in 1946; the name now expands to Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere.

SIM in SIM card stands for what?

It stores your IMSI number and its key to authenticate you on the network.

What does LED stand for?

Electrons recombining with holes in a semiconductor release photons.

Why is the phrase 'PIN number' considered redundant?

Personal identification number; the N is 'number', so 'ATM machine' commits the same sin.

IKEA is an acronym built from Ingvar Kamprad's initials plus what?

Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd; he founded the company at 17 in 1943 as a mail-order business.

The two Ms in M&M's stand for Forrest Mars and whom?

Murrie was the son of the president of rival Hershey; the candy launched in 1941.

What did 3M originally stand for?

It now makes more than 60,000 products from Post-its to respirators.

BMW is short for Bayerische Motoren Werke, meaning what?

The name arrived in 1917 when Rapp Motorenwerke rebranded.

GEICO stands for what?

It is the third-largest U.S. auto insurer, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland.

What is the truth about the name Spam?

Ken Daigneau won a naming contest in 1937; 'spiced ham' is the popular guess.

The name Yahoo was later reinterpreted as an acronym for what?

Jerry Yang and David Filo's site began as 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web' in 1994.

The name Lego comes from a Danish phrase meaning what?

Ole Kirk Christiansen adopted 'leg godt' in 1934, years before the plastic brick.

What does MASH stand for in M*A*S*H?

Robert Altman's 1970 film is set at one during the Korean War.

SWAT stands for Special Weapons and what?

The units handle shootouts, standoffs, raids and hostage-takings.

NASCAR is the National Association for what?

It is one of the largest spectator sports leagues in America.

FIFA's initials come from a name in which language?

Fédération Internationale de Football Association, founded in 1904 by seven European associations.

ESPN was an initialism of what original name?

The full name was dropped in 1985; the channel launched September 7, 1979.

HBO stands for what?

CNN, founded by Ted Turner in 1980, is the Cable News Network.

AT&T abbreviates the name of which company?

It is now the third-largest telecom company in the world by revenue.

IBM stands for International what Machines?

'Big Blue' is one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

DVD officially expands to Digital Video Disc or Digital what Disc?

It was invented in 1995 and first sold in Japan on November 1, 1996.

What does the 'S' in USB stand for?

Universal Serial Bus, developed by the USB Implementers Forum.

GPS is owned by which branch of the U.S. military?

The Global Positioning System is operated by Mission Delta 31.

DNA is short for what?

Two polynucleotide chains coil into the famous double helix.

What do the letters and number in COVID-19 stand for?

The virus itself is SARS-CoV-2.

RSVP is derived from a phrase in which language?

Répondez s'il vous plaît, literally 'respond if it pleases you'.

What does 'a.m.' stand for?

Latin for 'before midday'; p.m. is post meridiem.

Where was LOL first used almost exclusively before spreading?

It now turns up in face-to-face speech too.

YOLO became popular slang in 2012 after which rapper's single 'The Motto'?

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart had already named his ranch YOLO before 1996.

What does TL;DR stand for?

It dates from at least 2002 and now often introduces a summary.

SNAFU is an acronym for 'Situation normal: all...' what?

The polite version says fouled; the original Army version does not.

Why was SOS chosen as the distress signal?

Three dots, three dashes, three dots, sent with no pauses; the 'save our souls' reading is a backronym.

Adidas is named after founder Adolf 'Adi' Dassler, but is falsely believed to stand for what?

A classic backronym; the company was started in his mother's house.

'Wiki' is sometimes said to mean 'what I know is', but it really derives from what?

Wiki-wiki; the distress call 'pan-pan' is likewise from the French panne, breakdown, not 'possible assistance needed'.

Which term describes an ordinary word that people later reinterpret as an acronym?

It is a portmanteau of back and acronym, coined in the 1980s.

Alcoa is an acronym for what?

It remains among the world's largest aluminium producers.

Nabisco is a shortening of what?

It is now part of Mondelēz International.

Haribo is a syllabic abbreviation of what?

The founder's name plus his home city, the same trick as Adidas.

Aflac stands for what?

Founded in Columbus, Georgia in 1955, long before the duck.

What does 'Humvee' abbreviate?

HMMWV, made by AM General, largely replaced the jeep.

The word 'bit' in computing is a portmanteau of what?

A byte is most commonly eight of them.

'Modem' is a contraction of what?

It converts digital data for analogue lines such as telephone or radio.

The British supermarket Asda was incorporated in 1949 under what name?

Hence As-Da.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and what?

The mnemonic is used across project management and personal development.

The airline name Qantas is an acronym of Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial what?

The name reflects the two regions the carrier originally served.

FIAT stands for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili and which city?

Giovanni Agnelli founded the Italian Automobile Factory of Turin in 1899; the all-caps name became 'Fiat' in 1906.

NASDAQ is an acronym for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated what?

The name is now usually written as Nasdaq, though the all-capital form remains common.

The word 'canola' combines 'ola' for oil with 'can', short for what?

It began as a trademark of the Rapeseed Association of Canada and now denotes low-erucic-acid rapeseed oil.

AMBER in 'AMBER Alert' is officially a backronym for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency what?

The system was actually named after Amber Hagerman, a Texas girl abducted in 1996.

'Gestapo' is a syllabic abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, meaning what?

It was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and of German-occupied Europe.

In Doctor Who, TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In what?

The time-machine-spacecraft hybrid has appeared in the series since 1963.

The company name Sega is an abbreviation of what?

It first appeared in 1954 on a slot machine called the Diamond Star.

The name Interpol, adopted in 1956, was derived from what?

The International Criminal Police Commission had used the address since 1946; its official acronyms remain OIPC in French and ICPO in English.