Too Many Abbrevs.

Let's start out with a short "True or False" quiz:

1. A microwave is an appliance for cooking food - True|False
   
   
2. A vacuum is a machine for cleaning rugs - True|False
   
   
3. A video is a cartridge that goes into a VCR - True|False
   
   
4. Shocks are the parts of an automobile that keep it from bouncing around too much on a bumpy road - True|False
   
   
5. A Polaroid was a camera that produced pictures in less than 60 seconds - True|False
   

The correct answer to all of the above questions is: False. (A microwave is simply a form of electro-magnetic radiation. A vacuum is the complete absence of matter, etc.) And there are many other such words that I could have included in the quiz (e.g., auto, phone, photo, etc.).

Using abbreviated terms as labor-saving shortcuts is fine ... as long as everyone is clearly aware that those abbreviations are merely such. Bit I'm afraid that there is an ever-growing percentage of the populace that doesn't know it. (Most teenagers today think that microwaves actually are tangible kitchen appliances!)

We've become a nation that relies too much on implementing abbreviations ... so much so, that we now even find ourselves abbreviating abbreviations! (Haven't you ever heard anyone refer to the Y.M.C.A. as the "Y" ?)

Several years ago, as the year 2000 approached, there was much hoopla about the so-called "Y2K" problem (which had resulted from abbreviating 4-digit years as only two digit numbers). Now, you might have thought that all that fuss would have taught us a valuable lesson. But, no! After all the "Y2K" excitement ended, we went right back to expressing years as 2-digit numbers again!

And sports fanatics (i.e., "fans") all seem to think that every athletic team must have its name abbreviated to no more than two syllables:

San Francisco Forty Niners* ---> "Niners"

Philadelphia Seventy Sixers* ----> "Sixers"

Tampa Bay Buccaneers ----------> "Bucs"

- etc. -

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*(Just as in the case of "Y.M.C.A.", it's amusing to note that the terms "Forty Nine" and "Seventy Six" are, themselves, abbreviations for the years 1849 and 1776, respectively!)

I guess there's just no hope for us. If this kind of stuff keeps up, in a hundred years or so, the English language will shrink down to practically nothing, and then nobody will know what anybody is saying! (If we don't mind our P's & Q's PDQ, may we R.I.P.)