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Monday, May 02, 2011

Jargon creep

Long-time readers know I'm a bit of a language curmudgeon, but I enjoyed a new use of jargon I heard today.

I was just talking to a service provider with multiple SPINs, and rather than saying, "It looks like they used SPIN 1430xxxxx," she said, "It looks like they SPUN 1430xxxxx." [I'm using xxxxx to protect the innocent, of course.] I like it.

I've seen acronyms conjugated before: for example, "COMADed" is pretty common. But in this case, the acronym is spelled the same as an irregular verb, so the past tense is irregular. Splendid!

2 comments:

  1. I'm a first-time reader and am enjoying reading your comments. (I hope you don't ding me for using a dash in first-rate.)

    Anyway, I also notice misuse of BEN. The BEN is the Block 1 entity. Entity Number is the Block 4 entity. There is a difference. Don't say BEN for a Block 4 entity.

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  2. Oh, I'm with you there. Here's a recent post about the word "entity," with links back to earlier posts:
    http://blog.on-tech.com/2011/01/entities-on-move.html

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