HMU

Hit Me Up

The internet acronym “Hit Me Up” or HMU as it became to be known, went from being a relatively unknown term in 2009 to one of the most popular trends of 2010. HMU was literally unheard of in 2009, many instances attributed to user error. In May 2009, it was averaging 20 mentions a day, doubling each month to be mentioned in about 1,600 posts a day by the end of the year. Even though it grew quite substantially, it failed to make last years list.

Source: The next Web

BIFFO

Sta per «Big ignorant fellow from Offaly», la zona rurale dalla quale il premier irlandese Brian Cowen proviene. Lui risponde sempre con un'alzata di spalle. Per quanto lo riguarda - dice - Biffo è l'acronimo di «Beautiful intelligent fellow from Offaly». Le molte critiche alle sue origini, alle sue decisioni e anche al suo aspetto non scalfiscono la corazza del Taoiseach. «La politica non è un concorso di bellezza», taglia corto.

Per gli irlandesi il premier Brian Cowen è un «biffo». Trichet: urgente salto di qualità nel patto di stabilità

di Nicol Degli Innocenti

Il sole 24 ore

GONGO

Government Organized Non-Governmental Organization.

Many NGOs are not actually NGOs. They are what observers are now calling GONGOs – government organized non-governmental organizations. They are funded, staffed, and otherwise supported by governments. The idea is not to instigate or inspire change, but rather to control and manage it.

read more on: Schott's Vocab

What's the point of niceness?

published on: BBC News

The governor of the Bank of England says it's been a nice decade, but is niceness really something to strive for, asks Julian Joyce, in the first of a series of articles about changing times.
The last 10 years have been a "nice" decade, according to Bank of England governor Mervyn King.
He was of course using the word in an acronymous and strictly economic sense, a shortening of Non-Inflationary Consistent Expansion. But the choice of this acronym was deliberate, carrying an undertone related to something more than inflation.

SOBER

Acronym to describe the financial characteristics of Britain’s next decade: Savings, Orderly Budgets, Equitable Rebalancing.

The Governor of the Bank of England has warned that Britons face a decade of saving more and spending less, Philip Aldrick reported in The Telegraph:

"Alluding to the “Non-Inflationary Consistently Expansionary” [NICE] decade just passed and coining a new acronym to describe the years ahead, he warned: “The next decade will not be nice. History suggests that after a financial crisis the hangover lasts for a while. So the next decade is likely to be a ‘SOBER’ decade – a decade of savings, orderly budgets, and equitable rebalancing… A sober decade may not be fun but it is necessary for our economic health.”

Source: Schott's Vocab

The acronym hype

Some say it’s annoying, but some find it useful and makes people’s lives less complicated. Yet others say it’s a form of language abuse. Many believe it is another form of creativity. Observing the widespread use of acronyms in urban society will help us understand social trends.

The "Acronym inflation" is a condition where everybody can invent new acronyms and neglect the normal rules of thumb in the official language.

It used to be the government and authority that liked to use acronyms, but now everybody seems to be trying to make their own phrases. The acronym hype prevalent in this society, is being attributable to language economy where people are encouraged to be as efficient as possible in everything, including using words. The technology has played its part in supporting this trend with people sending messages via mobile phones and the Internet

HIICS

Acronym used to describe the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and Japan: “Heavily Indebted Industrialized Countries.”

published on: Schott's Vocab

In The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Evans revealed a new acronym indicative of changing “global economic fortunes” – HIICs:

That is shorthand for the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and Japan, or, as HSBC currency strategists are calling them, “heavily indebted industrialized countries,” or HIICs. They are displaying the kinds of investment risks traditionally associated with global backwaters. “Developed markets are basically behaving like emerging ones,” says HSBC’s Richard Yetsenga. And emerging markets are quickly becoming more developed.
Sensing and perhaps fueling the shift, investors have this year yanked some $36 billion from stock-market funds investing in HIICs, according to research firm EPFR Global, and stuffed $45 billion into emerging-market funds. Who can blame them? The “BRICs” of Brazil, Russia, India and China are “where the population growth is, where the raw materials are, and where the economic growth is,” says Michael Penn, global equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

New! Neologisms of the week

TWITTERING: The fanciful language creations associated with the online Twitter system

Busted: has modified oil rig, or just plain rig. A database search of coverage of the BP spill finds the first recorded use of busted came nine days into the crisis on April 29, when the MSNBC host Ed Schultz said, “The busted rig is leaking — get this — 200,000 gallons of oil a day.”

Chunking: In recent decades, the study of language acquisition and instruction has increasingly focused on “chunking”: how children learn language not so much on a word-by-word basis but in larger “lexical chunks” or meaningful strings of words that are committed to memory

Cracking the jargon: how to interpret five sentences commonly used by stock market experts

MAMIL: Middle-Aged Men In Lycra, taking up cycling with enthusiasm, in the process spending freely on high-end cycles and all the accoutrements, especially the clothing.

NEET

A government term for 16 to 19 years olds not in education, employment or training. The original reserch carried out by UK government was intended to be titled „Status Zer0“. During the fieldwork, „Status 0“ was simply a technical concept to depict the status of those young people not in education“, (status 1), training (status 2)and employment (status 3). It was felt however, that „Status Zer0“ represented a powerful metaphor for young people who appeared to count for nothing and be going nowhere.
This terminolgy, however, created a political furore at the local level and references to” status 0” in the research report were replaced by „status A“. A s questions concerning young people not in education, training and employment have entered the political and policy arenas, their categorisation has been sanitised yet further; it is alleged that at high levels of local central government they are referred to as NEET young people.

published on:Youth, the 'underclass' and social exclusion

by: Robert MacDonald

Don't be 404, know the tech slang!

A study of new slang terms entering English finds that technology is driving and perpetuating them.

For instance, "404" - the error message given when a browser cannot find a webpage - has come to mean "clueless".

Slang lexicographer Jonathon Green says that some such terms and abbreviations come about because of the limited speed and space afforded by text messaging.

Story from BBC NEWS

Linguistics: Speaking of Space

published on: Time

America's leap into space has stimulated science and spawned new industries. It has also created a new idiom: space-speak. Many a scientist finds the growing, and sometimes incomprehensible jargon essential to the simplest conversation about new devices and techniques. But many a layman has become convinced that it is only one more irritating and unnecessary obstacle looming between him and a better grasp of scientific accomplishment. In a detailed analysis of space-speak for the magazine Science, University of Michigan Psychologist David McNeill suggests that there is something to be said for both points of view.
Creativity Limitation. Such space-speak metaphors as "umbilical" (the cord connecting a space-walking astronaut to his craft) and "milk stool" (the arrangement of a missile's three rocket engines) are vital additions to the language, says McNeill. He is equally impressed by such metonyms as "eyeballs in" and "eyeballs out" (describing extreme conditions of acceleration and deceleration, respectively), and he approves of neologisms such as "rockoon" (a rocket launched from a balloon). Unfortunately, metaphors, metonyms and neologisms—and the creativity required to invent them—are limited. They constitute only about one-eighth of the entries in official NASA diction aries of space terms.
Most of the remaining space jargon, according to McNeill's analysis, is made up of "nominal compounds"—words strung together endlessly in what scientists consider a logical order to describe complex devices or systems. Controlling the attitude of a ship by ejecting gas through nozzles, for instance, is called "nozzle gas ejection ship attitude control." The longest nominal compound discovered by McNeill appeared in the Congressional Record, and sounded as if it had been translated literally from the German: "liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen rocket powered single stage to orbit reversible boost system."
Such unwieldy compounds, McNeill says, constitute 19% of all the words in written NASA reports—substantially more than he found, for example, in papers by psychologists (8%) or in articles by educators (3%). But they are also used extensively by non-space scientists, "apparently to meet the common need for technical terms in greater numbers than metaphors, metonyms or neologisms can supply."
Possessive Pretension. On the other hand, McNeill stresses, the compound is often used to extremes, especially by those who pretend to possess a degree of technical knowledge that they do not have. Establishing a "pretension index" based on the length of nominal compounds and their frequency of use, he discovered that in their speeches, members of Congress were even more compound-conscious than NASA engineers. A space-technology magazine was a worse offender. It printed 300% more six-word compounds than did written NASA reports.
Even the engineering mind has begun to boggle at the profusion of space-speak—which explains the reduction of some complex nominal compounds to straightforward acronyms. "Augmented target docking adapter" has become ATDA, "astronaut maneuvering unit" is known as AMU, and the "electronic ground automatic destruct sequencer" —used to blow up missiles that have gone astray—is known simply as EGADS.
More detailed study of space-age jargon would be beneficial, McNeill feels, and his report must be considered only preliminary. "But we can conclude," he says, "that the following statement is probably true: Space-speak is an engineering technology concept expression manuscript sentence grammar device."

Cloud Compunding's World of Acronyms: Enter at Your Own Risk

published on: advice.cio.com

With Forrester Research's help, I attempt to demystify the Cloud flavors known as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS for enterprise software.
What hasn't the high-tech industry done to the poor "Cloud Computing" moniker? For the past couple years or so, "The Cloud" has been hyped up like a LeBron James appearance, contorted like a Yoga-practicing Swami, poked and prodded again and again, and then hijacked by just about every apps vendor in the known universe.
Sucked up in the marketing vortex of cloud computing's hurricane were software-delivery models SaaS (software-as-a-service) and "Web-based" or "on-demand" computing. Along for the ride now—and further flummoxing market watchers and IT customers—are more aaS's: PaaS (platform-as-a-service) and IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service). (And don't forget about "private" and "public" clouds!)
Perhaps our favorite was the Governance-as-a-Service solution we heard about this winter. Yes, that's GaaS, friends. (But I digress.)
On occasion, it seems that even the most informed tech-vendor executives and marketing folks are just as confused as the rest of us. Or, perhaps even more insidious, they do know what they're saying—how they're bending truths and glossing over factual, technical inaccuracies—all in the name linking their product or service to The Cloud.
Defining cloud in the broadest of terms is not forbidden according to today's marketing rules. Many a vendor now calls any old app that runs via the Web a "cloud computing solution." (I'm actually doing "cloud blogging" right now!)
Nevertheless, it appears that The Cloud and its marketing-licious brood are here to stay. So what does it all actually mean?
In a new Forrester Research report, principal analyst Paul Hamerman provides definitions for each as well as examples of vendors that offer products and services in each category. It's a great place to start if you're a little overwhelmed by cloud lingo. Let's do it together!
First, this is how Forrester defines cloud computing:
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
OK, I buy that. Then the report then drills down further into the mix:

• Software-as-a-service (SaaS): Finished applications that are available on a rental basis.

• Platform-as-a-service (PaaS): A developer platform that abstracts the infrastructure and middleware.

• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS): A deployment platform consisting of virtualized hosting services.

HATIF

The acronymic name for a service established in Germany to help people escape radical Muslim groups.

published on: Schott's Vocab

Reporting on the decision of Germany’s intelligence agency to found HATIF, The Local/DPA revealed:
Participants and their family or friends can now find help via email or telephone with the new “HATIF” service, which stands for Heraus Aus Terrorismus und Islamistischem Fanatismus, or “Leaving terrorism and Islamist fanaticism.” …
“The main goal of HATIF is to prevent violence in the name of Islam,“ the intelligence agency the Verfassungsschutz said.
The service, offered in both Turkish and Arabic, will not try to lead people from the religion of Islam, but instead provide safe options for those hoping to extract themselves from extremist circles, the agency said.
Hatif is the Arabic word for telephone.

ABICI

Acronym for a group of growing economies: Africa, Brazil, India, China and Indonesia.

published on: Schott's Vocab

Reporting for Time on this year’s Global Forum in South Africa, Michael Elliott commented on the fragile economic recovery taking place in the developed economies of the Atlantic region, and spotlighted the “tremendous” performance of “what we will soon have to stop calling the developing world”:China grew by 8.7% in 2009, according to official figures. India showed excellent growth too, and even in Africa — so long dismissed by seers as an underperformer – growth hit 2% before the recession took hold, which followed years when the continent was growing at the historically robust rate of 6% or more.This isn’t simply a function of the famous BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China – setting the pace. Indeed, as veteran global economist Kenneth Courtis of Themes Investment Management pointed out, Russia has fallen out of the club of most-favored developing economies, having been unable (so far) to use its endowment of natural resources to build truly world-class companies. With Indonesia increasingly catching the attention of business leaders, and Africa too, it might be time to try a new acronym: ABICI, for Africa, Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Whatever you call them, the performance of the leading economies of the developing world has been sufficiently robust that political leaders like Rob Davies, South Africa’s Minister for Trade and Industry, were able to trumpet the potential of south-south trade – while acknowledging that even the best-performing southern economies had been hurt by the continuing weakness in the rich world.

WEIRD

Acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic.

published on: Schott's Vocab

Research from the University of British Columbia suggested that some psychological studies could be skewed because of their narrow samples:
According to the study, the majority of psychological research is conducted on subjects from Western nations, primarily university students. Between 2003 and 2007, 96 per cent of psychological samples came from countries with only 12 per cent of the world’s populations. The U.S. alone provided nearly 70 per cent of these subjects.
However, the study finds significant psychological and behavioral differences between what the researchers call Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies and their non-WEIRD counterparts across a spectrum of key areas, including visual perception, fairness, spatial and moral reasoning, memory and conformity.
The findings, published in Nature tomorrow and Behavioral Sciences this week, raise questions about the practice of drawing universal claims about human psychology and behavior based on research samples from WEIRD societies.

YUCKIES

Young Unwitting Costly Kids – a dubious acronym for adult children who rely on financial support from their parents.

Writing for The Telegraph, Bryony Gordon confessed: My name is Bryony and I am a Yuckie. It’s not quite the word I wanted to use to describe myself, but there it is, the latest acronym trotted out to denote what I am: a Young Unwitting Costly Kid, sapping my baby-boomer parents of all their hard-earned savings, and probably their will to live. New research released this week has found that an incredible 93 per cent of parents contribute to the finances of their Yuckies. Previously I have been a Kipper – Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings – while other members of my generation – I think that we are Generation Y, or perhaps I; one can never quite be sure – have been described as boomerang kids, returning to live at home when they really should know better.
According to a survey by a UK charity, two thirds of parents have reduced their own living costs to assist their 18–30-year-old children, and a third are going so far as to remortgage their homes. As the Telegraph noted: It is the latest evidence of how so-called Babygloomers are feeling the financial squeeze of funding both their own children and their parents.

published on: Schott's Vocab

WAGs

The acronym, which stands for ”wives and girlfriends”, has become popular during the 2006 FIFA World Cup. It has been used by the British press as a way of referring to the partners of the England national football team, but currently indicates the partners of the football players in general. The stereotype of the WAGs is that of beautiful women, always wearing expensive sunglasses and bags and whose main activity is shopping. With a similar meaning we may find the acronym HABs referred to ”husbands and boyfriends” of well-paid sportswomen, in particular tennis players.

L’acronimo, che significa ‘mogli e fidanzate’, si è diffuso durante la Coppa del Mondo di calcio del 2006 ed è stato usato dalla stampa britannica per indicare le mogli e le fidanzate dei calciatori della nazionale inglese. Attualmente, viene comunemente usato per indicare le mogli e le fidanzate di tutti i calciatori. Lo stereotipo della WAG è quello di una donna bellissima che indossa sempre occhiali da sole e borse costose e la cui principale attività è fare shopping. Con lo stesso significato possiamo trovare anche l’acronimo HABs che indica ‘mariti e fidanzati’ di sportive ben pagate, in particolare le tenniste.

published on: Englishfor