UK, 2005—the perceived indiscriminate and excessive use by the authorities of anti-social behaviour orders—apparently coined by Álvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights—‘Asbo’: acronym from the initial letters of ‘anti-social behaviour order’
Read More1970—British and Irish English—acronym from the phrase ‘all coppers are bastards’—customarily written (tattooed in particular) rather than spoken
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‘Wags’ (2002): the wives and girlfriends of the England World Cup football team—‘Gwags’ (2006): golfers’ wives and girlfriends
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USA, 1984—the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards viewed as a single achievement—coined by U.S. actor and musician Philip Michael Thomas
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UK, 1992 (coined by Terence Blacker)—a novel depicting the lives and concerns of the British rural middle classes—from the association of Aga cookers with those classes
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USA, 1979—acronym from ‘not in my back yard’—first used in ‘the Nimby syndrome’ with reference to the disposal of nuclear waste
Read MoreUSA, 1956—acronym from ‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’—‘Wasp’, or ‘WASP’: a person who belongs to, or is thought of, as being part of a white, upper middle-class, northern European, Protestant group that dominates economic, political and cultural activity in the USA
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early 21st century—acronym from ‘Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’, with punning allusion to ‘capture’ and ‘gotcha’
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UK, 1990s—either from Romany ‘čhavo’, an unmarried Romani male, a male Romani child, or from English or Anglo-Romany ‘chavvy’, a baby, a child
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late 19th century—‘POTUS’ was originally an abbreviation used in the Phillips code, a telegraphic code created in 1879 by Walter P. Phillips (1846-1920).
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