6 ms·
I know this is super nitpicky but Ham isn't an acronym. It's ham as in ham-fisted -- amateur radio.
by gaze 2y ago
I know this is super nitpicky but Ham isn't an acronym. It's ham as in ham-fisted -- amateur radio.
- xattt 2y agoI always thought it was because OG hams had some sort of regional accent and would say hamateur.
- LeoPanthera 2y agoThere's something about three-letter words with an A in the middle that make people assume they're acronyms. HAM and MAC (as in, Macintosh) are often incorrectly written that way. It's weird.
- verandaguy 2y agoMac might be a word, but MAC, MAC, and MAC are all acronyms, to say nothing of the cosmetics brand MAC (styled as M•A•C, though not M.A.C., and remains a word, not an acronym or initialism).
- inopinatus 2y agoMac is a valid abbreviation of the Macintosh, which is named indirectly after John McIntosh, a Canadian farmer and apple breeder of Scottish descent, who gave his name to the McIntosh Red cultivar. Scottish artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh was also born McIntosh but revised his family name after a spelling error at the Glasgow School of Art. The Mackintosh that you wear is similarly misnamed after Charles Macintosh (no relation), inventor of the modern waterproof raincoat. And so it goes.
- inopinatus 2y agoAn O appears to be a similar trigger. Our building manager persists in announcing the security tokens thus, as in, "Your new key FOB is ready.", and I feel real pain every time.
- adolph 2y agoJust imagine saluting them and responding, “Very well; that will be all for now, Lieutenant. At twelve o’hundred we will head outside the wire.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forward_operating_bases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forward_operating_base...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- HPsquared 2y agoGotoBLAS always gets me. Named after the developer, Kazushige Goto.
- jodrellblank 2y agoThings unexpectedly named after people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725
- Avicebron 2y agoMedium Access Control (MAC) here in the protocol mines we use it pretty frequently
- cyberax 2y agoAlso Mandatory Access Control.
- msylvest 2y agoAnd Message Authentication Code
- dingensundso 2y agoAnd Macintosh Apple Comouter
- Scarblac 2y agoAlso ELO ratings for chess (named after Dr. Arpad Elo).
- patwolf 2y agoWhenever I say Elo out loud, it takes a lot of mental energy to not say E-L-O, as if I'm talking about the Electric Light Orchestra.
- gsck 2y agoLUA is the one that annoys me the most, its a word. Its moon in portugese
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nedrylandJP 2y agoOr my boss letting us know there will be a TEAMS meeting.
- RF_Enthusiast 2y agoYeah, it doesn’t stand for anything. It’s just a bunch of Highly Advanced Messaging.
- dylan604 2y agoit Hain't AM
- dtgriscom 2y agoWhoa: there's a fairly long WP article on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio
- MoreMoore 2y agoIs WP a common abbreviation for Wikipedia? I usually just say wiki.
- anilakar 2y agoWikipedia is a wiki, but only one specific wiki is Wikipedia
- bell-cot 2y ago"WP" looks like WordPress to me.
- biofox 2y agoI thought Washington Post
- in12parsecs 2y agoI am old enough to still see "WordPerfect"...from the 1980s.
- nedrylandJP 2y agoWell, I am old enough to still see William Penn...from the 1680s.
- MoreMoore 2y agoYou don't look a day over 200.
- 2y ago
- beeskneecaps 2y agoI had always heard "Hertz, Armstrong, and Marconi". 73!
- amatecha 2y agoInterestingly that naming scheme is debunked on the adjacently-linked wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio#Hertz%E2%80%93Armstrong%E2%80%93Marconi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio#Hertz%E...
- smelendez 2y agoI’ve been seeing it capitalized more and more over the past decade or so. It grates for me as well but seems to be getting more common.
- vitaflo 2y agoIt’s an easy way to tell that someone isn’t a ham tho.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoSame for Mensa. I've never seen an actual member write MENSA but people who fake being members do it constantly. Think it might come from some of the organization's various wordmark logos being misinterpreted.
- RicoElectrico 2y agoProbably capitalized by the HN's title auto-mangler.
- anothertroll123 2y ago[flagged]
- anothertroll123 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dang 2y agoOk, we've downcased the AM above.