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THURSDAY, 9 MARCH, 2000, PHILADELPHIA | |
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I thought I should make public a term I coined some time ago that is only becoming more and more à propos to current society: TLA. TLA is a three letter acronym for Three Letter Acronym. But it has a history, and has mutated and grown up and now means much more than that: Definition: A TLA is an acronym that once stood for something, but has since become its own term and has managed to somewhat, if not entirely disassociate itself from its original comprising words.Take some examples of TLA’s: SCSI, DVD, CD-ROM, UNICEF, SCUBA, to name a very, very few, for there are hundreds in daily use. These are TLA’s because when we see them, we see them as words and have quite forgotten, or simply don’t care what they stand for. SCSI (pronounced “scuzzy”), to me, is a specific (and desirable) kind of computer peripheral device. A CD burner or a scanner or a Zip drive. I had to wrack my brain to recall that it once stood for Small Computer Systems Interface, whatever the fuck that means. When you pop your CD into your CD-ROM, do you think of it ever as your Compact Disc - Read Only Memory? When you go to Hawaii or the Canary Islands, do you rent a self contained underwater breathing apparatus? No. You prefer common scuba-gear. It’s cheaper. And who the hell knows what UNICEF stands for anyway? Did anyone ever? To further demonstrate the distance some TLA’s have traveled from their original meanings, consider the following. When I ask what brand and model NIC card is in a computer, am I not, in essence, asking for its “Network Interface Card card?” And the ubiquitous maxim of every bank across the globe, “Never divulge your PIN number to anyone.” “Never divulge my Personal Identification Number number?” Okay, I won’t. Therefore, TLA, ipso facto, does not necessarily have to mean an acronym containing three letters, as originally intended, because it has been intregrated into English and is now free to mutate and evolve just as every other word in any language may. Try and use it in a sentence, ASAP. In response to this diary entry, my brother Pschtÿckque wrote to me: Since you don’t divulge you Personal Identification Number number, how can others take your money from an Automated Teller Machine machine?Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, ATM’s are known as “MAC” machines. “MAC” is a TLA of which I have yet to excavate its origins. “Money And Cash”? It’s anyone’s guess.
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