Recently in the Acronyms Category

EDNOS turns out to be an acronym for Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.

Which isn't at all unusual in itself, but I'm kind of amused by the idea that someone can be diagnosed as having EDNOS.

(Eating disorders themselves are obviously no laughing matter. What I'm amused by is the phrasing.)

I was also amused by the Guardian's attempted acronym expansion. I first encountered the term in an article about orthorexia nervosa. (The article reads kind of like a parody, but it appears to be serious.) It says:

Until a few years ago, there were so few sufferers that doctors usually included them under the catch-all label of "Ednos"—eating disorders not otherwise recognised.

At which I thought, wait, shouldn't that be "Ednor"? But then Wikipedia cleared it up; I assume the article's author just got confused.

Turns out that quango, also spelled qango, is an acronym for "quasi non-governmental organization" or "quasi-autonomous NGO." Looks like the term is fairly common in the UK and elsewhere, but I don't think I had ever heard it before.

A few weeks back, I heard a country song on the radio in which the singer sang:

I smell T.R.O, you B.L.E.

I puzzled for a while over what T.R.O. and B.L.E. were before I got it.

It may be more obvious in print, but if you don't see it, say it aloud a couple of times. And/or Google [Travis Tritt T.R.O.], which will also reveal the name of the song.

On a video about an explosion, I heard an announcer use a term that sounded like "blevvies." I got curious and Googled it; turns out it's an acronym. According to Wikipedia:

BLEVE, pronounced [...] "blevvy"[...], is an acronym for "boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion". This is a type of explosion that can occur when a vessel containing a pressurized liquid is ruptured.

Apparently the term "UFO" is out; in its place, "UAP," for "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," is gaining popularity.

Jon Hilkevitch of the Chicago Tribune says:

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over Unidentified Flying Object) was first seen by a United ramp worker[....]

--"In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?", by Jon Hilkevitch

But other sources suggest that the "UAP" term is actually an older term, and TSOR hasn't led me to anything definitive one way or t'other. Any thoughts?

I always vaguely wondered how "lysergic acid diethylamide" got abbreviated as "LSD." I think I figured (or had been told) that the S came from "lySergic," but that didn't make much sense.

Turns out, according to Wikipedia, the acronym is from the German name: "Lysergsäure-diethylamid," where the S is for "säure."