THE ACRONYM SYNDROME

(Some Yeasty Names Devised by Reaching Outlandishly, Mnemonically and Elastically)

ACRONYM, n. A word formed from the first letters or syllables of other words, as UNESCO (from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), [from Greek akros, tip, end + (dialectal) onyma, name]. - From the World Book Dictionary, Thorndike, Barnhart Dictionary, exclusively for Field Enterprises Educational Corp., 1967.

The source of the definition listed above is cited only because I could not find"acronym," a word I know and dislike, in the Oxford English Dictionary, Unabridged (natch!), nor in various Websters. The fact that it was found only in a relatively nouveau publication, put out by a relative nouveau publishing concern, says something for the word, I think.

Further, the fact that the word was coopered up partly from a Greek word which means "tip" is yet another warning signal. Now "tip" is frequently used by those sociology wallahs who go around saying things like "The statistic that only 10 per cent of inner city dwellers get proper amounts of riboflavin may represent but the tip of a deprivational iceberg."

There you have it - icebergs and tips. Just as the iceberg's tip signifies but a fraction of the danger posed to merchant shipping lanes, so does "acronym" represent but a snippet of the peril to communication lanes mounted by the totality of "parameter," "interface," "subset," "maximize," "update" and other recent monstrosities.

Indeed, one might argue - as I am about to attempt to - that acronyms, of and by themselves, pose a real and present danger to the republic of letters. In the dear, dead days of innocence, when the use of capital letters of an organization's title meant just that and nothing more, no one thought, for instance, of pronouncing DOC as if one were familiarly addressing a medico. Nor did anyone try to make DCAC sound like "dee-cack" (heavens be praised!) or make the DCU come out "dakoo."

But, hold! Time is getting short. The tip, or the end, is getting nigh. Acronyms are efflorescing all the time (which could be a good title for a Top Ten tune).

In this respect, a serious student of acronyms, or even a semi-serious student (nay, even an hysterical student of them), is tempted to ponder: Which came first, the acronym or the egg-head who thought it up?

The scenario for "Birth of an Acronym," one suspects, goes something like this:

(Manfred Mangle and Constantine Atropos, two Madison Avenue types, are slumped disconsolately in Eames chairs alongside a Noguchi table. The table is mounded high with butt-full ashtrays and is set in an office which is appropriately replete with tinsel touches and angles.)

Mangle: C'mon, Con, churn the cortex! We've got to brainstorm a name for this computer lingo. And I mean B.M. - Before the Morrow!"

Atropos: Yeah, yeah, I know. It's got to be short and memorable. I tried SHORT and got no further than "Simple Hopeful Organization for Retrieval ... and then I stopped."

Mangle: Just as well, too. "Hopeful!" For God's sake, Con, you can't sell anything as negative, as nebulous, as nothing, as that!"

Atropos: Okay, Manny, maybe it was a spitball. But what have you done? MEMORABLE. I'm not going to even try.

A short, oppressive silence ensues. Then Atropos leaps to his feet, upsetting an ashtray and Mangle's nerve grid.

Atropos: How about, how about BASIC, Manny?

Mangle: Well, yeah, but what's it stand for?

Atropos: Never mind. We can figure that out later.

That, based on external evidence, the Farmer's Altnanac and a third-hand ouija board, seems to be how acronyms are born. (BASIC, by the way, stands for Beginners' All-Purpose Simplified Instruction Code, which would seem to read BAPSIC, except that isn't any fun.) Else, how does one explain COMPUTE (Computer Oriented Materials Production for Undergraduate Teaching - where, oh where, is the "E?"), or IMPRESS (Interdisciplinary Machine Processing for Research and Education in the Social Sciences)?

Surely, the capital letters first sprang full-blown from some mathematician's forehead and then cerebral sweat forced words into uneasy juxtaposition to complete the alphabetic charade (Confected Homemade Adjectives Reflect Author's Demented End-Purpose).

Computer freaks seem to be the most addicted to these verbal vagaries, as witness these two, sired by Tuck School out of Kiewit: LAFFF (Language to Aid Financial Fact Finders), or, after that labored boffola, what else could one do but CRIII (Computer Research Involving Investment Information)?

There is also, from that same parentage, SAMS (Selected Applications in Management Science). Can't you just see old Humphrey Bogart, collar unbuttoned, tie loosened, cigarette adroop in the corner of his mouth, croaking to a second-year Tuck student, complete with alpaca sleeveguards and green eyeshade who is seated at a computer console, "Play it again, SAMS"?

However, faculty panjandrums also play this game, as do, to a lesser degree (happily), administrators. The faculty has, for instance, COI, which is not a bashful Laotian, but the Committee on Instruction. COCA is not simplified English for a hot drink; it is the Committee on Off-Campus Activities (there is that double-standard for that pesky hyphen). Indeed, it isn't even a very hot committee, for it seems soon slated for obsolescence.

There are, still in the faculty bailiwick, COP (somewhat fuzz-like, it is the Committee on Organization and Policy), CAP (getting near the head, the Committee Advisory to the President), CYRO (not a long-nosed bon vivant, swashing on buckles, but the nuts-and-bolts Committee on Year-Round Operation). There is also, administratively speaking, the recently formed SCOPE (not, as its fabricators are wont to point out, a mouthwash, but the Student Clearinghouse for Off-Campus Programs and Employment).

Then there are more tenuous tendrils of this ivy vine, standing for hemi-semi-demi Dartmouth organizations, ones that nidificate in college space, but do not necessarily hatch Big Green fledglings. Such as MOVE, which is not a van-line but is the Museum's On-Going (that is a prepositional fudge) Venture in Education, a project admirably aimed at providing area elementary and secondary schools with teaching kits; and RAP, no swinging talk session it, but the Regional Arts Program, equally admirably aimed at furnishing live artists to these same schools.

Finally, there is said to be MUMPS, somehow or other a product (one suspects test-tubes) of the Medical School and Kiewit. Rather than find out what it is and thus risk exposing myself to its possibly malign miasma, I think I shall just retire to my SOFA (Society for Opposing Febrile Acronyms).

Ed. note: Mr. Farley was once executive secretary and the entire membershipof the Pothole Watchers Society ofNorthwest Central New Hampshire, orPWSNCNH. It is an acronym, he reports, only pronounceable by MiddleSuabians with forked tongues.