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Bookmark or Share- I need a word for things not going your waySNAFU which stands for: "Situation Normal All Fk'd Up" SNAFU was a flag we used to fly on our ship during the Vietnam War -- our unofficial motto was: The schedule has been changed, because we were always giving up scheduled periods of R & R in exchange for Search and Rescue missions.
- Word for abbreviations that have become standard wordsThe word snafu, for example, was originally an obscene U.S. Army reference (situation normal -- all f'ed up"), and fad is purportedly originally an acronym for "for a day". Some terms, such as AWOL, seem to be stuck in between-- they are almost used as words, but equally almost always capitalized.
- Do you use "a" or "an" before acronyms / initialisms?a URL, a snafu, a Charlie Foxtrot, a moron the URL, the snafu, the Charlie Foxtrot, the moron (all pronounced /ðə/) Most native English speakers never notice that there are two different pronunciations for the, but non-native English speakers need to know this immediately.
- Are the acronyms FYI, BTW, LOL, WTF now considered "normal" words?Regarding the reference to SNAFU, FUBAR and OK, the argument to be made is whether the original meaning, not the origins, is lost. "OK" is deceiving in that, while almost no one could state what the earliest-recorded expansion of the acronym is, we still use it in the same general meaning.
- What is the term for words that have changed meaning over time?For example, in relation to this question on Workplace Stack Exchange the term snafu was of military origin and was used to define a person, team, organisation, etc that continually makes mistakes. The first time I saw the term was in relation to a data protection leak and this now seems a pretty common usage e.g this article amongst the tech ...
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