WTF R U Sayin'? Codes, Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Phrases: The shorthand of the digital age

By Mitch Sexton

The digital age created the ability for individuals to immerse themselves in social media, sending texts from their cell phones, or Tweets (status updates) using Twitter. While convenient, it brought on a language of its own with the potential to cause confusion. Is BYOB and invitation for you to Bring your own booze or an invitation for you to Be your own boss? When your offspring hurriedly types CD9, is that the name of a new soft drink or, like POS, a warning that they have Parents Over Shoulder? WTF R U Sayin' provides two list (one alphabetical by code, the second, alphabetical by description) over 3,500 symbols, codes, acronyms, abbreviations, and phrases to assist you in making sense of the jargon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mitch Sexton
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370933273

Mitch Sexton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR The author’s career spans 40 years in Information Technologies where providing documentation and training materials were a major part of developing applications. During this time, whether working on large-scale computers, PC’s, or networked systems, the author found the success of any applications highest if the materials were tailored to the audience to keep their attention. To keep his fiction and non-fiction publications separate, the author's non-fiction work, published under the name Mitch Sexton, include: •Pick-3 Lottery: Strategies and Tactics •WTF Are You Saying? •Listen To What You Wrote. The author's fiction works, published under the name Evans Bissonette, are: •The Ice Age Saga trilogy - books in this series include: oThe Shaman’s Song oThe Sojourner’s Tale oCrooked Foot In addition, he has published a historical fiction, •Explorer! The Adventures of Walter Wellman. While works of fiction, these stories are all written as action-adventure stories and are meant to entertain readers of all ages. These are not stories of what was, but more stories of possibilities, of what could have been. In many cases, notes are included to explain unfamiliar terms or expand on descriptions. The author and his wife, both retired, have been married over 45 years. They live in a suburb of Detroit and have three adult children. You can email the author at [e-mail] The author maintains a website, www.evansandrew50.weebly.com, where he writes about his books and ideas on the background he created.

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WTF R U SAYIN'?

Codes, Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Phrases: The shorthand of the digital age

By Mitch Sexton

Copyright © 2016 Mitch Sexton

McCoy and Sextant, Publisher

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Copyrights for any products mentioned are the property of the copyright holders

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favorite ebook retailer to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is dedicated to my wife, Sue, and to my family, all of whom have provided an unending supply of love, support, and encouragement.

To all those, including a host of anonymous contributors on the internet, who put up with my constant inquiries and contributed to the construction of this collection. They have freely provided their feedback and encouragement. It is my belief that if everyone had the support of (known and unknown) friends like these we would live in a much better world.

Table of Contents

What is this book?

Enter the digital age

Would I be offended

How did all of these terms evolve you ask?

Common Abbreviations

Codes, Acronyms, Abbreviations,and Phrases: The shorthand of the digital age (Alphabetical by Code)

A Codes

B Codes

C Codes

D Codes

E Codes

F Codes

G Codes

H Codes

I Codes

J Codes

K Codes

L Codes

M Codes

N Codes

O Codes

P Codes

Q Codes

R Codes

S Codes

T Codes

U Codes

V Codes

W Codes

X Codes

Y Codes

Z Codes

Codes, Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Phrases: The shorthand of the digital age (Alphabetical by Description)

Special Descriptions

A Descriptions

B Descriptions

C Descriptions

D Descriptions

E Descriptions

F Descriptions

G Descriptions

H Descriptions

I Descriptions

J Descriptions

K Descriptions

L Descriptions

M Descriptions

N Descriptions

O Descriptions

P Descriptions

Q Descriptions

R Descriptions

S Descriptions

T Descriptions

U Descriptions

V Descriptions

W Descriptions

Y Descriptions

Z Descriptions

About the Author

What is this book?

(Return)

It is a dictionary (of sorts) modeled after the first English dictionary. If you will hang in there with me, you will see the connection.

By the end of the 1500's, England had to deal with an explosion of new words entering the language due to developments in literature, science, medicine, and the arts, as well as a renewed interest in classical languages.

In 1604, to help people understand and use this new information, English schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey published Table Alphabeticall. It was the first single-language English dictionary.

Previously, books of this type were bi-lingual—for example, English to French, Spanish to English—offerings. Cawdrey's book listed about 3,000 words, along with a simple, brief description of each one and, occasionally, a demonstration of how to use the term.

Because of the public's limited education, Cawdrey's efforts provided a much-needed book that would identify both the spelling and the definition of each term. He intended his work to be useful for any unskillful persons.

Nearly 150 years later, Samuel Johnson followed Cawdrey's lead and published A Dictionary of the English Language.

Enter the digital age

(Return)

The prose of modern day correspondence is divided between formal and informal language.

Formal language is the writing style you learned in school and you use it for letters, contracts, magazines, newspapers, books, etc.

The informal language of the digital age is different from the official language taught in schools. Informal language—the spoken word—is the everyday language, good-natured or bad, and includes slang as used by people at work and play. In its digital form, as used across social media, informal messages are generally in lower case and punctuation is almost non-existent.

For special occasions, to emphasize an idea, or to express an emotion, the sender may type some terms in all capitals. However, keep in mind the only rule in informal messaging is that writing your entire message using all caps is considered shouting; and shouting is considered rude!

If you have not already guessed, I should warn you that some of the language falls into the area of street vernacular—the language of the streets—and may offend readers because it can be crude, blunt, rude, and even vulgar.

Whether participants are in their homes, among friends, or in groups, you will find their messages cram emails, text, and the other social network venues.

Today, while the average person knows many more words than their forebears, their informal day-to-day working vocabulary averages less than 5,000 words. This provides an efficient reduction in words, but the digital age created a greater need for short-form codes, acronyms, and abbreviations. The goal of this generation's user is to create a message that communicates the crux of an idea without being bogged down by a lot of fluff. Twitter, with its current 140-character limit, is a shining example of the opportunity to communicate using fewer characters.

Caution should be exercised as a message could be reduced from intelligence to garbage, if such coding is overdone. However, when done right, use of these shortcuts makes the job of communicating—whether texting via your cell phone, or through any of the other forms of social media—more efficient. This push for speed and efficiency caused many of the niceties of prior communication forms, such as grammar and punctuation, to fall by the wayside.

Would I be offended?

(Return)

Because some of the terms fall into the area of street vernacular, you can see that this is not a book for elementary school kids.

While you may consider street language crude, rude, vulgar, and in poor taste and could be offended by its use, this document attempts to list a collection of terms and their definitions in order that you can better understand what is said and, more importantly, what you might be saying. In other words, are you saying what you think you are saying?

As an example, there is an abundance of acronyms involving the ever-popular F-bomb, (words such as fuck and some of its many associated variations: f**k, f***, f------ , fark, feck, ferk, flak, fork, frak, frap, freak, frick, frig, futz, fudge) frequently appear on the list. An urban legend, one of many, is that the acronym has its roots in 15th century England and is alleged as an abbreviation for the then legal term For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. While the legend is colorful and tinged with a type of historical romanticism, it is not true. More probable, the word (defined as to strike) stems from an earlier period and was injected into the English language from any number of its previous invading contributors. Possibly candidates are Roman/Latin, Low German, Frisian, Norse, Scottish, or Dutch.

Depending on your point of view, some argue that with many of these terms, the acronyms used would work just as well without the added expletives. The other school of thought seems to be that adding expletives convey not only the meaning, but also the emotions of the message. Use and non-use are the sender's choice. In some cases, although it probably obvious, I listed some versions with and without the expletive to show that you have a choice.

In some definitions, I have made use of a version of various don't care symbols (for example *, $, or - giving: f**k, F------, A$$ or *a*) where I figured that translation was obvious.

How did all of these terms evolve you ask?

(Return)

Anthropologists claim that previous communications efforts have become part of the folklore passed on in a manner similar to oral traditions. 

That might be good to know, but what methods are used to create terms? I can think of a few ways.

Some terms, as BYOB (Bring Your Own Booze), are created by using the first letter of each word. A similar method would be to use the first letter of major words, ignoring articles such as A/AN or THE, the in order to produce a more compact acronym.

Individuals, driven by the need for speed have sometimes made their own terms by dropping most vowels and some consonants from a word or phrase in order to turn THANKS into TKS.

Alternately, some terms may be derived phonetically using word sounds. For example, words like THANKS may become THX. C is sometimes substituted for 'See', while U may be substituted for 'You', or R for 'ARE'. Jeep received its name because people phonetically slurred the initials of the words used to identify the military's General-Purpose vehicle.

Some police/fire codes used on popular TV programs provide an abundance of terms, which have inserted themselves into the language. In a similar manner, but to a lesser extent, you will see some CB and amateur radio terms, emoticons, along with acronyms originally used by foreign participants. Users, familiar with older technologies, move up to the new technologies but carry the terminology they are comfortable with, along with them.

Some terms have been around for ages. It is rumored that BFE (Butt F**king Egypt) probably dates back to when Caesars' Legions first invaded that county. Scanning the list, you see terms like, SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up), BYOB (Bring Your Own Booze), OTL (Out to Lunch), RE (Regarding), and others sprinkled throughout.

This happens because a group adopts a particular method of communicating and members share their knowledge with others within the group. Nothing remains static. Words and phrases once popular soon lose their luster as new terms come along. As terms spread, these codes morph into multiple definitions depending on the group, and the subculture within a group, and they get a life of their own. Each group has an explanation and justification for their variation in method and tradition.

Understandably, groups may claim supremacy and each maintain the belief that they are correct in the application and use of the methods, the acronym, and its meaning. This works as long as all parties to the message agree on the same definition. Take the acronym BAM. Depending on the group, it might mean Below Average