The CBB

As suggested in this post . . .

IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet
IPA - India Pale Ale

TLC - Tender Loving Care
TLC - The Learning Channel
TLC - The Learning Company
TLC - Tastes Like Chicken
TLC - T-boz, Left Eye, and Chili

HRC - Hillary Rodham Clinton
HRC - Human Rights Campaign

LCV - League of Conservation Voters
LCV - Landau Core Vocabulary

SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder
SAD - Social Anxiety Disorder (confusing, no?)

BPD - Borderline Personality Disorder
BPD - BiPolar Disorder (confusing, confusing)

AoC - Age of Consent
AOC - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

And cross-linguistically . . .

AfD - Articles for Deletion
AfD - Alternative für Deutschland

AOC is also a brand of TVs and monitors, whose logo is stylized as ΛOC. Even though I have relatively little knowledge of Greek, I always read the logo as "LOC" and briefly misunderstood a customer who wanted line-out convertors.

I've always liked the dozen or so uncommon usages of PMS. Around 2000 I went through a phase of using alternative operating systems, including but not limited to Linux, which was fairly obscure at the time. One of them I used was OS/2. OS/2's GUI was called "Presentation Manager", which was run from a program called pmshell.exe ... I always insisted on calling it PMS, but of course the official abbreviation was just PM. I'm also using PMS as the abbrevation for Proto-Moonshine, which follows a tradition of using three-letter acronyms in general.

.HIV was the file extension used by Windows installers for upgrades. Not confusing, but I always found this distasteful, and it sets people up for a joke like "oh, better be careful .... i think that's a virus". I would not be surprised if theyve changed the file extension by now.

PMS Hell?

CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIA Clinical Investigator Award

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBI Friends of the Bible Institute

ABC American Broadcasting Company
ABC Australian Broadcasting Company

Pabappa wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 12:23 .HIV was the file extension used by Windows installers for upgrades. Not confusing, but I always found this distasteful, and it sets people up for a joke like "oh, better be careful .... i think that's a virus". I would not be surprised if theyve changed the file extension by now.

That's a joke asking to be made.

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 13:57 ABC American Broadcasting Company
ABC Australian Broadcasting Company

Another confusing one!

Also . . .

ABC American-born Chinese
ABC Already Been Chewed
ABC Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequences

WTF What the f*ck?
WTF World Taekwondo Federation

WWF World Wildlife Fund
WWF World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE, "World Wrestling Entertainment", after a legal battle against the other WWF)

CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
CBC Canadian-born Chinese

CAF classy/cool/hill/corny/creepy/confused as f*ck (different small social circles use different meanings, overall not in common use)
CAF Confederation of African Football (the FIFA division for Africa)

GOP Grand Old Party (the US Republican Party)
GOP Government of Pakistan

Not three letters long, but regardless:

LOTJ Legends of the Jews (a famous compilation of Jewish legends about the Bible from ancient (post-Temple) and medieval sources, published in 1909)
LOTJ learn on the job

LOTR Lord of the Rings
LOT-R Life Orientation Test, Revised (a psychological test of optimism)

Pabappa wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 12:23.HIV was the file extension used by Windows installers for upgrades. Not confusing, but I always found this distasteful, and it sets people up for a joke like "oh, better be careful .... i think that's a virus". I would not be surprised if theyve changed the file extension by now.

The new extension is .msu ("Microsoft update") in fact, and has been used since at least Windows XP.

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC Big Black Cock

MSA Morpho-Syntactic Alignment
MSA Modern Standard Arabic

SAE Standard Average European
SAE Standard American English
SAE Society of Automotive Engineers
SAE School of Audio Engineering
SAE Sigma Alpha Epsilon

SO Standard Oil
SO Subject before Object

VSOP Verb-Subject-Object-Presentative word-order
VSOP Very Superior Old Pale cognac
VSOP Very Small Outline Package
VSOP VLBI Space Observatory Programme
VSOP Variations seculaires des orbites planetaires (and I know I’ve misspelled it)
VSOP Vienna Symphony Orchestra Project
VSOP Vasuvum Saravananum Onna Padichavanga

XO Oblique before Object
XO Executive Officer

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 20:50MSA Morpho-Syntactic Alignment
MSA Modern Standard Arabic

That one has long been the cause of confusion in discussions on conlanging forums...

My favourite is:

DOS - Disk Operating System; also short for MS-DOS
DoS - Denial of Service

Khemehekis wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 09:54
IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet
IPA - India Pale Ale

Cross-linguistically:
"IPA" Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam "Natural Science Studies"

Inspired by Salmoneus, Micamo, et al.:

MVP - Most Valuable Poster
MVP - Moraga Valley Pool
MVP - Minimum Viable Population

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 13:57 CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIA Clinical Investigator Award

Also the Culinary Institute of America.

DDR Dance Dance Revolution
DDR Deutsche Demokratische Republik

PNG Papua New Guinea
PNG Portable Network Graphics

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC Boring Brown Chocolate

Another cross-linguistic:

PCNU - PerCutaneous NephroUreteral stent
PCNU - Pengurus Cabang Nahdlatul Ulama

Cross-cultural:

FWO - Friends of the Wanamaker Organ (USA)
FWO - Frontier Works Organisation (Pakistan)

Khemehekis wrote: ↑07 Aug 2020 01:54 Inspired by Salmoneus, Micamo, et al.:

MVP - Most Valuable Poster
MVP - Moraga Valley Pool
MVP - Minimum Viable Population

Moraga Valley Pool? That's an obscure one. Someone's from NorCal

WeepingElf wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 21:35 My favourite is:

DOS - Disk Operating System; also short for MS-DOS
DoS - Denial of Service

I had a Linux teacher who pronounced it "dee oh ess" for both senses which I took to be a derisive smear against the operating system. I have fond memories of using /produz/ (ProDOS) when I was four years old, and only learned the proper /dɔs/ pronunciation many years later. I have never heard it spelled out apart from that one teacher.

I remember looking at a long wire once labeled CATV with another student in college. We disagreed over whether it stood for "Category Five" or "Cable TV". I remember that I ended up being right but I dont remember which side I was on. So while CATV doesnt quite fit in a three-letter space, it was definitely a confusing acronym for us in that class.

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: ↑12 Aug 2020 03:08 Moraga Valley Pool? That's an obscure one. Someone's from NorCal

Damn, I got found out.

Yalensky wrote: ↑08 Aug 2020 11:46

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑06 Aug 2020 13:57 CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIA Clinical Investigator Award

Also the Culinary Institute of America.

DDR Dance Dance Revolution
DDR Deutsche Demokratische Republik

Welcome to the board, Yalensky!

Khemehekis wrote: ↑12 Aug 2020 09:27 Welcome to the board, Yalensky!

Thank you! Though I could have sworn I had already made a handful of posts more than a year ago. Perhaps they got pruned somehow.

Yalensky wrote: ↑13 Aug 2020 02:52

Khemehekis wrote: ↑12 Aug 2020 09:27 Welcome to the board, Yalensky!

Thank you! Though I could have sworn I had already made a handful of posts more than a year ago. Perhaps they got pruned somehow.

You're welcome.

We had a pruning not too long ago, and all of the old conversational threads are still pruned. Threads in the Everything Else section that had their last post more than a year before the pruning are also pruned.