Longest initialism that's not an acronym

October 11, 2011 2:41 PM

What is the longest initialism that is commonly spelled out rather than pronounced as a word?

Three- and some four-letter initialisms are often spelled out (e.g., TSA or UCLA), but longer ones are usually pronounced as a word (e.g., NHTSA is said "nitsa"). Are there 5-letter or longer initialisms that most people would say as a sequence of letters rather than as a word?

posted by jewzilla to writing & language (44 answers total)

Well, I'll kick this off. ASPCA is five.
posted by madmethods at 2:43 PM on October 11, 2011

NAACP
posted by juniper at 2:44 PM on October 11, 2011

PCMCIA cards.
posted by Mapes at 2:45 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

My organisation is NWLDLRN! Try saying that when answering the phone!
posted by ozgirlabroad at 2:45 PM on October 11, 2011

Also at 6, AFL-CIO.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:46 PM on October 11, 2011

Does NAACP count?
posted by Tomorrowful at 2:46 PM on October 11, 2011

Also, the military does this all the time. I can hear my father's voice when I see the initialism JTF-GNO, for example.
posted by juniper at 2:47 PM on October 11, 2011

LGBTQIAA, although LGBTQIA is more common.
posted by jedicus at 2:49 PM on October 11, 2011

Lots of experimental psychedelic type drugs, if numbers are permitted. The longest one (which almost certainly isn't) off the top of my head is 5-MEO-DMT. I don't know if things like 5-MEO-DALT are pronounced or not.
posted by cmoj at 3:11 PM on October 11, 2011

MSNBC?

Also, I find it amusing that "www" became a common acronym for "worldwide web," considering that the acronym (when spoken) is nine syllables while the full phrase is only three.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:15 PM on October 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

cmoj: "Lots of experimental psychedelic type drugs, if numbers are permitted. The longest one (which almost certainly isn't) off the top of my head is 5-MEO-DMT. I don't know if things like 5-MEO-DALT are pronounced or not"

Things like AcO and MeO groups are frequently not pronounced as separate letters and aren't initialisms in any case.
posted by turkeyphant at 3:18 PM on October 11, 2011

The NHMRC and ACSQHC both come to mind.
posted by impluvium at 3:19 PM on October 11, 2011

WYSIWYG is pretty long and usually spoen, AFAIK. Hey, also AFAIK!
posted by StephenF at 3:21 PM on October 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's already been superseded in this thread, but I'm always surprised that people pronounce every letter in OB/GYN. At least they don't say "slash" in the middle.
posted by dfan at 3:21 PM on October 11, 2011

SPEBSQA. Although I pronounce it as a word, I think most folks don't.

(The incomparable) LSJUMB.
posted by lothar at 3:21 PM on October 11, 2011

Err, spoken.
posted by StephenF at 3:22 PM on October 11, 2011

GYOBFW
posted by villanelles at dawn at 3:22 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

No, WYSIWYG is pronounced as a word: "wizzy-wig."
posted by stopgap at 3:24 PM on October 11, 2011 [7 favorites]

WYSIWYG is pretty long and usually spoken, AFAIK.

I've always heard WYSIWYG pronounced as "whizzy wig", not spelled out letter-by-letter.
posted by dfan at 3:24 PM on October 11, 2011

Also at six: APFSDS (armor piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot)

SPEBSQA. Although I pronounce it as a word, I think most folks don't.

I have heard of that, but only ever as Spebskwuh.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:27 PM on October 11, 2011

TCP/IP was the first one that came to mind.
posted by HFSH at 3:47 PM on October 11, 2011

So far I think I like PCMCIA the best. The others at 6 or 7 letters seem much more obscure (might just be my own bias) or have hyphens/slashes. I'll throw out ROTFLOL at 7.
posted by madmethods at 4:11 PM on October 11, 2011

I don't think I've commonly heard people pronounce TANSTAAFL as an acronym. But they generally don't speak the individual letters (as the OP specified). I think there is a third category where people just say the actual phrase (so it's effectively only an abbreviation in written form).
posted by madmethods at 4:17 PM on October 11, 2011

Long, and certainly one of the most ungainly: SPICMACAY
posted by holterbarbour at 4:18 PM on October 11, 2011

I just used this one in an Ask post: NTTAWWT.
posted by workerant at 4:46 PM on October 11, 2011

N.I.I.O.M.T.P.L.A.B.O.P.A.R.M.B.E.T.Z.H.E.L.B.E.T. R.A.B.S.B.O.M.O.N.I.M.O.N.K.O.N.O.T.D.T.E.K.H.S.T.R.O.M.O.N.T.

is the world longest acronym (56 characters) according to Guinness.

It means "The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR" in Russian.

My guess is you'd have to have mastered languages like Welsh to be able to say that one as a word.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 5:01 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I came here to say WYSIWYG, but also wanted to add NASDAQ. Would QWERTY count?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:38 PM on October 11, 2011

I came here to say WYSIWYG, but also wanted to add NASDAQ. Would QWERTY count?

you are doing this plain backwards.

You pronounce WYSIWYG as "wizzy wig".
You pronounce "NASDAQ" as "nas dack"
You pronounce "QWERTY" as "querty"

What he's looking for are things that always get used as initials.

Like others have used, PCMCIA is just said "pee cee em cee eye ay".

It's just pronounced as a string of letters. That's what he's looking for.

I can offer "MMORPG", but it's not any longer than some of the other long ones already offered.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 5:57 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I came here to say WYSIWYG, but also wanted to add NASDAQ. Would QWERTY count?

I've never heard any of those pronounced letter-by-letter.
posted by dfan at 5:58 PM on October 11, 2011

AFL-CIO is yet another six-letter one.
posted by box at 6:11 PM on October 11, 2011

I don't have any to offer, just a thought. Doesn't it seem like these are more likely to occur when they're formed by combining older shorter acronyms? MSNBC was easy to say because we were already saying MS Word, MS Dos, etc, and the acronym NBC had already been around for even much longer. Same thing with AFL-CIO. Or when we start adding letters to an already existing acronym, like LGB, then LGBT, then LGBTQ, then LGBTQI, etc. But, if it's a brand new acronym, once it gets past 3 or 4 letters, it's too hard to pronounce each letter, and there's no history to help us, so we switch to wanting to turn it into a single word, like QWERTY. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but this seemed to stick out to me when reading over the answers given here.
posted by marsha56 at 6:21 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is a bit odd and I am not sure how this fits in, but i was involved in track and field in college and the governing body for championships was the ICAAAA. For our region, that was NEICAAA (New England) but we always called int eye-see-four-a. Wierd.
posted by arveale at 7:03 PM on October 11, 2011

dfan: "It's already been superseded in this thread, but I'm always surprised that people pronounce every letter in OB/GYN. At least they don't say "slash" in the middle."

My wife is in med school, and doctors do not pronounce every letter. It's "Oh Bee Gine."
posted by Chrysostom at 7:07 PM on October 11, 2011

Here's one that's seven letters: SFTGFOP = "Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe" = One of the grades of whole leaf Orange Pekoe tea.
posted by Flunkie at 7:37 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

OMGWTFBBQ
posted by sanko at 9:15 PM on October 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

OMGWTFBBQ

To me, that's actually in a third category. When I read that, I pronounce it in my head not as "oh em gee doubleyou tee eff bee bee cue", and not as "om gwat fubbuck", but as "oh my god what the fuck barbecue".

There are several things that fall into that category for me. In addition to the three that compose that example, off the top of my head I treat several other internet acronyms that way (RTFA, STFU, GTFO, ROTFL), and some baseball terms (BA, SB, CS). Probably a bunch of other things, too.

Then there are at least two different "in between" categories for me:

The first is exemplified by GWRBI, which I naturally treat as neither "gee doubleyou arr bee eye" nor "game winning run batted in" nor "gwoorbee", but as "game winning arr bee eye".

The second is exemplified by "LOL", which I naturally treat as "laugh out loud", but I treat things based on it, like "LOLed" (as in "I LOLed"), as words ("lolled").
posted by Flunkie at 9:41 PM on October 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

New Jersey State High School Athletic Association. NJSIAA. All of the letters are said separately.
posted by sparrow89 at 12:00 AM on October 12, 2011

Oops! New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, that should be.
posted by sparrow89 at 12:01 AM on October 12, 2011

Ah. Yes. I did have it backwards. Apologies for the minor derail that caused.
posted by StephenF at 3:52 AM on October 12, 2011

CSIRO.

(People who say SIGH-roh, please report to Shed 3 for liquidation.)
posted by obiwanwasabi at 11:12 PM on October 12, 2011

CSIRO.

(People who say SIGH-roh, please report to Shed 3 for liquidation.)

I always assumed it was pronounced "cicero."
posted by jedicus at 1:56 PM on October 13, 2011

CSIRO.

(People who say SIGH-roh, please report to Shed 3 for liquidation.)

My ex is a long-time CSIRO employee, and she and all her colleagues say SIGH-ro as a matter of course.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:23 PM on October 13, 2011

NYSPHSAA
New York State Public High School Athletics Association
posted by thewestinggame at 9:00 PM on October 16, 2011

One I've just learned: NKOTBSB.
posted by StephenF at 8:58 AM on October 20, 2011