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iFreilicht

FlexATX Authority
Original poster
Feb 28, 2015
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There
Are
Always
Acronyms
And
Abbreviations
Longer
Than
The
1 - ones
You
Think
2 - to
Be
The
Longest

As we are all about saving space, I thought it would be fun to try and find the longest acronym that has actually been used in more than one instance.

Rules are completely arbitrary and as follows:

An acronym/abbreviation...
  1. ... with a larger letter count wins
  2. ... with a higher density (character count divided by length of acronym) wins, if letter count is equal
  3. ... needs to get more than 300 results on google
Preferably, it should also have a page on the internet where its meaning is explained.

So far it's TIMTOWTDIBSCINABTE (There's more than one way to do it, but sometimes consistency is not a bad thing either) at a whopping 18 letters, shortening 87 characters for a density of 4.833.

A new king has risen! LMAOROTFLBTCSTCNDBFOOTWIFOAGWLLBGWTHROOTSAIAKBAYB (Laughing my ass off rolling on the floor biting the carpet, scaring the cat, nearly dying by falling out of the window in front of a guy who looks like Bill Gates, who then horrified runs out on the street and is accidentally killed by a yellow bulldozer) at a mind-boggling 49 letters and a density of 5.12.

If you find a longer or just a funny one, feel free to tell us. Nonsensical discussion about acronyms is highly encouraged.
 
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iFreilicht

FlexATX Authority
Original poster
Feb 28, 2015
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2,361
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Just remembered a very dense abbreviation:

VHDL: (VHSIC(Very High Speed Integrated Circuit) Hardware Description Language)

While it only has a letter count of 4, it's density is a whopping 16! Even if you count VHSIC as one word, you're still at 9.
Certainly in the spirit of SFF, I think ;)
 

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
I can do one better, with an abbreviation that's the name of an AI that generates playable video games:

ANGELINA: A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA

Following your above notation, that would be:

ANGELINA: (A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA(A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA(A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA...

I believe a recursive acronym is going to have a density of infinity, so I'll take my gold medal and GTFO, thank you very much :)
 

EdZ

Virtual Realist
May 11, 2015
1,578
2,107
I can do one better, with an abbreviation that's the name of an AI that generates playable video games:

ANGELINA: A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA

Following your above notation, that would be:

ANGELINA: (A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA(A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA(A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA...

I believe a recursive acronym is going to have a density of infinity, so I'll take my gold medal and GTFO, thank you very much :)
To continue the one-upmanship, I give you GNU (GNU's Not Unix). Infinite recursion in a mere 3 characters!
 

iFreilicht

FlexATX Authority
Original poster
Feb 28, 2015
3,243
2,361
freilite.com
Meh, recursive acronyms are such a well-known loophole they've got their own wikipedia page.
Only finite densities are legitimate because you can't actually expand the abbreviations, that would take all time and energy in the universe.