‘What’s an acronym many people know of but don’t know what it stands for?’ – 23 abbreviations that will leave you FUBAR

Acronyms play a part in all our lives, whether we like it or not. Some of them are deeply baked into our lives, like NHS, while some of them are annoying but ubiquitous, like ROFL. But more still are very familiar, yet we don’t actually know what they stand for.

They’ve been chatting about this last phenomenon on the AskReddit page after user NegativeKarmaBots posed this question:

What’s an acronym many people know of but don’t know what it stands for?

Lots of people chipped in with examples of abbreviations that in many cases we don’t even realise are abbreviations, like these…

1.

‘RADAR (radio detection and ranging).’
–Flimsy_Carpet1324

2.

‘Most people use CAPTCHA daily and have no clue it stands for ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’.’
–Juliettecreamy

3.

‘Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.’
–naegele

4.

‘EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).’
–broncos_mcgee

5.

‘When I worked there, we also had two others: Every Paycheck Comes On Thursday (true) Excruciating Polyester Costumes Of Torture (also true).’
–hoosieryankee

6.

‘LEGO – Leg Godt (Danish for ‘play well’).

IKEA – Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd. The furniture company is named after its founder, his family farm, and his hometown in Sweden.’
–shonuff_1977

7.

‘Personal Identification Number Number.’
–maechtigerAal

8.

‘Automated Teller Machine Machine.’
–Eli_Renfro

9.

‘USA PATRIOT Act: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Requited to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.’
–jollyllama

10.

‘Pakistan = Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindh, Baluchistan. ‘i’ was added for ease of pronunciation. It was convenient that pak also meant pure.’
–Steampunk007

11.

‘SNAFU. It sounds so innocuous, like ‘Ooops, got into a little snafu’. But it comes from army slang: ‘situation normal, all fucked up’.’
–sunbearimon

12.

‘Modem – modulator-demodulator.’
–myDefiance