OT: Exceptionally Bad Phrases

[AndyC]

Acronyms. God help us. It's just sad that whenever some citizens' group forms and has to figure out what to call itself, everybody starts thinking of words that could stand for something.

Of course, the one that really bugged me for a while was an environmental group that started in my home town around 1990 or 91 - APT Environment, which stood for "Assuring Protection for Tomorrow's Environment."  OK, first of all, that's not a name. It describes what they (in their own minds) were doing, not who they were. And "apt" is not a particularly significant word either, so the acronym was kind of meaningless. But the real sore spot for me was that they couldn't even come up with a clean acronym. They left a whole word hanging off the end. Seriously, that was the best they could do. I wished I'd have been there just to explain that the whole point of an acronym is to avoid spelling things out in full. Jeez, pick another word and come up with a name that actually fits it. That would only be moderately stupid.

Best acronym, hands down, has to be from the Polymorph episode of Red Dwarf: the Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society, or CLITORIS.

[Ozzymandias]

I hate the phrases "family friendly" and "24-7."

[BoyScoutKevin]

JimH and Dean brought up something interesting, the misuse of the word sting for the word bite, which is actually covered in one of the films reviewed at this site. In "Lair of the White Worm," P.C. Erny (Paul Brooke) says: "Your ladyship, I've been stung by a snake." And Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) somewhat irked, says: "Bees sting. Snakes bite."