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List of initialisms

This is a list of initialisms, acronyms that are pronounced as a series of the names of the constituent letters.

aka - also known as
AA - Alcoholics Anonymous / Automobile Association
AAA - American Automobile Association
ACL - Access Control List
ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union
AD - Latin "Anno Domini" (In the year of our Lord)
ADT - Atlantic Daylight Time (UTC-3 hours)
AFACT - As far as I can tell
AFAIK - As far as I know
AFAIR - As far as I remember
AFJ - April Fool's Joke
AIM - AOL Instant Messenger, among others
AFK - Away from keyboard
AGM - Annual General Meeting
AI - Amnesty International; Artificial Intelligence
AIC - African Independent Church[?]
AKDT - Alaska Standard Daylight Saving Time (UTC-8 hours)
AKST - Alaska Standard Time (UTC-9 hours)
AMD - Advanced Micro Devices
AOL - America Online
AP - Associated Press
apm - Advanced Power Management
ASIO - Australian Security Intelligence Service[?]
ASL - American Sign Language
ASP - Application service provider
ASP - Active Server Pages
AST - Atlantic Standard Time (UTC-4 hours)
AT&T - American Telephone and Telegraph Company
ATV - All-Terrain Vehicle
AUC - 1. Latin "AB URBE CONDITA" (from the founding of the city (of Rome) or "ANNO URBIS CONDITAE" (in the year from the founding of the city (of Rome) 2. "area under the curve" in the concentration time curve (medicine)
AVO - Apprehended Violence Order
B2B - Business to Business
B2C - Business to Customer
B2E - Business to Employee
BB - Brigitte Bardot (actress) / Boys' Brigade (Christian youth organisation)
BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation
BBQ - Barbeque
BC - Before Christ / Blind Copy (in emailers)
BCC - Blind Carbon Copy
BCE - Before Common Era
BFE - Beyond/Butt F*****' Egypt (colloquial for "quite far away")
BMI - Broadcast Music Incorporated / Body mass index
BMX - Bicycle Motor Cross
BO2K - Back Orifice 2000
BOFH - Bastard operator from hell
BP - British Petroleum (today, BP doesn't officially stand for everything)
bpm - Beats per minute
BRB - Internet chat abbreviation, "be right back"
BSA - Boy Scouts of America
BSE - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, better known as Mad Cow disease
BSL - British Sign Language
BST - British Summer Time (UTC+1 hour)
BT - British Telecommunications plc
BTO - Built to Order
BTW - By the way
BYOB - Bring your own beverages/bottle
CB - citizens' band radio
CBC - Canadian Broadcasting Company
CC - carbon copy
CCCP - Cyrillic letters corresponding SSSR, see USSR
CD - Compact disc
CDC - Centre for Disease Control and prevention
CE - Common (or Christian) Era (cf. AD)
CEPT - Conference Européenne des administration des Postes et des Télécommunications (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations)
cf. - Latin confer (compare, or see also)
CFG - Context-free grammar, Control flow graph
CIA - Central Intelligence Agency
CID - Criminal Investigations Department
CIS - Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union
CLEC - Competitive (?) Local Exchange Carrier
CO - Central Office (Phone Company office or POP)
CMM - Capability Maturity Model
CMR - Coaxial Main Rotors (helicopter type)
CND - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
CNN - Cable News Network
CPA - Certified Practicing Accountant
CRM - Customer Relationship Management
CSA - Confederate States of America
CSICOP - Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
DC - Italian Democrazia Cristiana
DDT - dicloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (insectice)
DEA - Drug Enforcement Agency
DH, DD, DS - dear husband, dear daughter, dear son (increasingly prevalent on social mailing lists, blogs, and bulletin boards)
DHSS - Department of Health and Social Security
DNA - DeoxyriboNucleic Acid
DND - Do Not Disturb
DOA - Dead On Arrival
DVD - Digital Versatile Disk (was Digital Video Disk)
EEC - European Economical Community
ELF[?] - Extremely low frequency
ESA - European Space Agency
ESP - Extra-Sensory Perception
ETA - estimated time of arrival; Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna
etc - latin "et cetera" (and remaining)
ETLA - Extended TLA
EU - European Union
FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation
FDR - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FLK - Funny-Looking Kid (medical diagnosis in-joke)
FMSF False Memory Syndrome Foundation[?]
FPS - First person shooter
FST - Finlands Svenska Television[?] (Finland's Swedish-language television)
FTL - Faster Than Light
FUBAR - F****d Up Beyond All Repair/Recognition
FYI - For Your Information
FWIW - For What It's Worth
GE - General Electric
GFY - Internet chat acronym, "good for you", or "go fuck yourself", depending on the context
GL - Grenade Launcher
GM - GameMaster (role-playing terminology) / Genetically Modified[?]
GMO - Genetically modified organism
GT - Gran Turismo
HMCE - Her/His Majesty?s Customs and Excise
HMP - Her (or His) Majesty's Prison
HMS - Her (or His) Majesty's Ship (see Royal Navy)
HMSO - Her (or His) Majesty's Stationery Office
HQ - Headquarters
IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency
IAI - International African Institute
IANAL - I am not a lawyer
ICAO - International Civil Aviation Organization
ICC - International Criminal Court
IFO - Identified flying object
IIRC - If I recall correctly
ILC[?] - International Law Commission
ILO - International Labour Organisation
IMF - International Monetary Fund
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
IMO - International Maritime Organization - In My Opinion
INLA - Irish National Liberation Army
IPN - Polish Institute for National Memory (Instytut pamieci narodowej)
IRA - Irish Republican Army
IRC - Internet Relay Chat
IRO - International Refugee Organisation
IRS - Internal Revenue Service
ISA - International Seabed Authority
ITN - Independent Television News (British TV news company)
ITU - International Telecommunication Union (yet to be established)
JFK - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
JRA - Japanese Red Army
KARNAC - Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context
KGB - Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security - Soviet Intelligence Service
KIA - Killed In Action
KKK - Ku Klux Klan
LATA - Local Access Transport Area
LEC - Local Exchange Carrier
LED - Light Emiting Diode
LGB - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
LBGT[?] - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual
LIFO - Last In First Out
LMAO - Laughing my a** off.
LMS - London Mathematical Society[?]
LOL - Laughing Out Loud
LSD - Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
MG - Machine gun
MHz - Megahertz
MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Milli Istihbarad Teskilati (Intelligence service of Turkey)
MMU - Manned Maneuvering Unit
MOPE - Most Oppressed People Ever (politics)
MS - Multiple sclerosis
MSIE - Microsoft Internet Explorer
MTR - Main and Tail Rotor (helicopter type)
MTV - Music TeleVision; MainosTeleVisio (Finnish commercial TV company)
n/a - not available / Not applicable
NAIRU - Non Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment
NBC - Nuclear/Biological/Chemical - National Broadcasting Corporation
Nfld - Newfoundland
NGO - Non-Governmental Organization
NLP - Natural Language Processing or Neuro Linguistic Programming
NPC - Non-Player Character (roleplaying terminology)
NPOV - Neutral point of view
NPR - National public radio
NSA - National Security Agency
NZ - New Zealand
OAU - Organization for African Unity
OSS - Organization for Strategic Services (forerunner of CIA)
OTOH - On The Other Hand
PABX - Private Automated Branch Exchange[?] (company phone system)
PBX - Private Branch Exchange[?] (company phone system)
PC - Personal Computer; Player Character (roleplaying terminology); Politically Correct(ness)
PDA - Public display of affection[?]; personal digital assistant
PFO - Pissed, Fell Over (medical diagnosis in-joke)
PINF - People In Need Foundation[?] (Czech charitable organization)
PLC - (British) public limited company
PLO - Palestine Liberation Organization
POP - Point of Presence
POTS - Plain Old Telephone Service, also PANS - Pretty Advanced (or Awsome) Network Services
PWP - Plot, What Plot? (in online fiction, especially fanfic or erotic fiction, to denote plotless, um, "feel-good" stories)
QED - Latin "quid es demonstrata" (that proves it)
qv - Latin "quod vide" (which see)
RAF - Royal Air Force; Red Army Faction
Rap - Rythm and poetry
R&B - Rythm and Blues[?]
RBOC - Regional Bell operating company ("Baby Bell")
RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police
RIP - Rest in Peace (requiescant in pace)
RNA - Ribonuclear Acid
ROFL(MAO) - Rolling On the Floor Laughing (My A** Off)
RP - role-playing
RPG - role-playing game; Rocket Projectile Gun/Rocket Powered Grenade
RPN - Reverse Polish Notation
rpm - Revolutions Per Minute - RPM Package Manager[?]
rps - Revolutions Per Second
RUC - Royal Ulster Constabulary
SA - Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment, forerunner of SS)
SAR - Search and Rescue[?]
SAS - Special Air Service; Scandinavian Airline Systems[?]
SBS - Special Boat Service
SDP - Social Democratic Party (European politics)
SIS - Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6)
SLA - Symbionese Liberation Army
SMDR - Station Message Detail Recording
SMG - Submachine Gun[?]
SOE - Special Operations Executive (WW2 British organization)
SOL - S**t Out of Luck
SOV - Single occupant vehicle
SPQR - Senatus Populus Que Romanus
SS - Schutzstaffel (elite guard) - Spanish ship
SSRI - Social Systems Research Institute[?]
STOL - Short Take Off and Landing
STOVL - Short Take Off and Vertical Landing
SVO - subject, verb, object
SWAPO[?] - South West African People's Organization
TATT - Tired All The Time (medical diagnosis in-joke)
TLA - Three-Letter Acronym
TMR - Twin Main Rotors (helicopter type)
TTYL - Internet chat acryonym, "talk to you later"
UCK - acronym for two Albanian guerilla movements
UCLA - University of California Los Angeles
UFO - Unidentified Flying Object
UN - United Nations
UNHCR - United Nations High Commission for Refugees
UPU - Universal Postal Union
USA - United States of America
USAF - Unites States Air Force[?]
USC - United States Code
USS - United States ship
USSR - United Soviet Socialist Republics (ie. Soviet Union)
VSO - Voluntary Services Overseas
VTOL - Vertical Takeoff & Landing
WC - Winston Churchill - water closet
W3C - World Wide Web Convention
WCL - World Confederation of Labour
WFP - World Food Program
WHO - World Health Organization
WIPO - World Intellectual Property Organization
WMO - World Meteorological Organization
WTC - World Trade Center
WTO - World Trade Organization
WW1 (or WWI) - World War One
WW2 (or WWII) - World War Two
WWF - World Wildlife Fund; World Wrestling Federation
WWW - World Wide Web
YMCA - Young Men's Christian Association
YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary
YWCA - Young Women's Christian Association