Acronyms & Etymology

Second (out of two) in our articles-about-concepts-described-by-words-that-sound-like-etymology series, let's talk about future etymologists. Past etymology has always been easy. You look at old words and see what still older words they look like. If you are fanciful, you can draw maps that show the words moving around the continent. (Be sure to use those big red stylized arrows that start off real wide at the ends and get narrow just before the tip where they get wide again. Those are historical map arrows!)

Acronyms screw up the whole process. "Laser" doesn't sound like any word that comes before it. If you didn't know it was an acronym, you would have no way of guessing. It's even worse, because those scientists treacherously dressed it up to look like a real word, i.e. a laser is something that lases.

You can already see the corrosive effect acronyms have on our etymology. Every time a weird new word like Chav comes up, one of the most popular explanations for its origin is always some kind of acronym. When the origin of any word could, for all you know, be an acronym, you have no reason to assume it's anything else. Just make up a string of words that could fit.

Acronym Question: What is the deal with the DEA? Is "Drug enforcement agency" the best they could do? Is there some law that federal agencies may only have three letters for their acronyms, and DEA was as coherent as they could make it in three words? Drugs don't get enforced. That's just silly.