Acronyms and Initialisms Trivia

1. Located nominally on the 38th Parallel, which two countries are still separated by a DMZ?

From Quiz Life is Too Short - Use a TLA!

Answer: North and South Korea

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a 4 km wide, 250 km long area separating the borders of North and South Korea. Although crossing the 38th Parallel (north), it runs slightly more south-west (from the western coast of the Korean Peninsula) to the north-east (eastern coast). The DMZ was established to separate the two armed forces as part of the July 1953 Armistice Agreement. There is a United Nations Buffer Zone, also known as the 'Green Line', in Cyprus.

From Quiz AQUA aka A Quiz Using Acronyms

Answer: Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms

It should actually be a COBR meeting but that isn't as scary as being told you are the subject of a COBRA meeting, which is usually chaired by the Prime Minister. The first COBRA meeting was under Edward Heath in response to the miner's strike of 1972 and themeetings continue to be held as and when required, such as in response to the poisoning on UK soil of former Soviet spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in 2018.

From Quiz OHMSS

Answer: Military Intelligence, Section 6

Military Intelligence, Section 6, is the Secret Service agency which passes information to the British government relating to foreign intelligence. It was formed in 1909. People confuse this with MI5, the security agency which gathers information related to domestic threats inside the UK.

From Quiz For What Does it Stand?

Answer: National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations

Opened on February 4, 1971, the "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations" was founded by the National Association of Securities Dealers. Its headquarters are at 165 Broadway, New York NY. In 1992, Nasdaq joined forces with the London Stock Exchange to form the first linked intercontinental securities market. For its first 35 years, Nasdaq was officially classified as a stock market but, in 2006, this was amended to became a 'licensed national securities exchange'.

From Quiz More Acronyms from History

Answer: SPQR

SPQR is an acronym for "Senate and People of Rome." The "Q" is for "-que" in Latin (an enclitic particle), meaning "and," thus, "Senatus Populusque Romanus." "Roma" is the Latin and Italian name of Rome. TGIF is "Thank God it's Friday" and FDIC is the "Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation."

From Quiz 'A' Is for ACRONYM

Answer: cure it

SARS stands for 'Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome', a contagious, and sometimes fatal, viral respiratory illness which first appeared in China in November, 2002; it is a serious form of pneumonia. SARS was subsequently identified by the World Health Organization in 2003. 'Patient Zero' was a businessman who had traveled from China through Hong Kong, Hanoi and Vietnam; both the businessman and the doctor who diagnosed him died from the disease.

From Quiz Acronym Meanings

Answer: Self contained underwater breathing apparatus

Scuba is already widely accepted in general conversation as a word in its own right, as used in phrases like "scuba diving," "scuba gear," among others.

From Quiz Everyday Acronyms & Initialisms

Answer: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Due to its everyday usage, it can also be written Nato, whilst in French it is OTAN (Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord). Initially set up during the Cold War, NATO was an alliance designed to prevent the outbreak of war, as an attack on one member state would be considered as an attack on all of them. In 1954 the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO (possibly to weaken the alliance), but were turned down and when West Germany entered NATO in 1955 the Communist countries of Eastern Europe formed the Warsaw Pact. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall several countries that were members of the Warsaw Pact (which broke up in 1991) have joined NATO, bringing the total number of member states to 28 when Croatia and Albania joined in 2009. In its history NATO has used military force to intervene in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as the naval operations against Somali pirates (from 2009) and sending training missions to Iraq after the Iraq War.

From Quiz I Owe You Some Acronyms Too

Answer: Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus & Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

The SCUBA device, or Aqua-Lung, was created by Jacques Cousteau in 1943.

From Quiz A to Z Acronyms

Answer: Australia and New Zealand

The acronym stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. ANZAC Day is celebrated every 25th of April to commemorate the joint efforts of both countries during The Great War. (And by the way, neither Newport nor Africa are countries!)

From Quiz Random Acronyms

Answer: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs is an alternative rock band from New York that formed in the year 2000.

From Quiz The Ever-Helpful Acronym

Answer: Sealed with a kiss

SWAK goes back to at least 1918, when homesick Doughboys serving in France wrote to their sweethearts back in the U.S. They included the acronym SWAK on the envelopes, so that said sweethearts would know that the flame of love burned bright. The tradition continued through the Second World War.

From Quiz Acronym Mania

Answer: Video Home System

On one of the web-sites I visited while making this quiz, I found 'VHS' was in their top 50 searched for, so I guess it's not as common knowledge as you might think! Before the emergence of DVD for home recording and replay of visual media items, most homes had a VHS recorder/player.

From Quiz Abbreviations

Answer: Bottle

Booze and beer work out too but they are not six letters o.k.?

From Quiz Abbreviations We Should Know

Answer: WV

The two letter abbreviation without periods should be used for mailing.

From Quiz Acronyms

Answer: Basketball

National Basketball Association

From Quiz Short For?

Answer: Special Weapons and Tactics

The SWAT team is a specialized team developed by the FBI. To sum it up, in the case of particularly dangerous operations, such as active shooter situations, the SWAT team is nationally trained to respond to these threats.

From Quiz Life is Too Short - Use a TLA!

Answer: QED

QED, or 'quod erat demonstrandum', is used as a concluding line in mathematical proofs. It signifies that the sequence of logical steps show that the initial statement is consistent with the final conclusion.

From Quiz OHMSS

Answer: His Master's Voice

HMV is the name of an entertainment retail store first founded in London in 1921. The name was taken from an English painting by Francis Barraud called "His Master's Voice" which shows a dog, Nipper, listening to a phonograph.

From Quiz For What Does it Stand?

Answer: National Earthquake Information Center

The National Earthquake Information Center was originally set up as part of the national Ocean Survey. Coming under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior, it was relocated to Boulder CO in 1972 before settling at its current location on the Colorado School of Mines campus in Golden CO two years later. Free public tours of the facility are available on Mondays and Thursdays by reservation.

From Quiz 'A' Is for ACRONYM

Answer: ethical

PETA is an acronym for 'People for Ethical Treatment of Animals', an animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia and founded in 1980. They have launched campaigns to stop the wearing of fur and leather, to discourage eating meat, trapping, hunting, the use of animals in circuses and just about anything that could endanger animals. It is the largest animal rights group in the world, and tends to be very confrontational in its beliefs and its advertising.

From Quiz Acronym Meanings

Answer: Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation

A laser may mean both the device that emits light or the amplified light itself, and the term laser is now in commonplace use as a word.

From Quiz Everyday Acronyms & Initialisms

Answer: Absent WithOut Leave

Some people include 'official,' but all leave is official in the British Army and going AWOL is a serious offence that can land a soldier in military prison. The acronym has since entered into everyday English to mean someone who has disappeared without letting friends/relatives know where he/she has gone.

From Quiz I Owe You Some Acronyms Too

Answer: North Atlantic Treaty Organization & North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

The NATO Treaty was signed in 1949. Members include the United States, Canada, and most of Europe.

From Quiz OMG Acronyms are Awesome

Answer: rugby

"RFU" stands for the Rugby Football Union, which is in charge of all the rugby clubs in England. It was first made in 1871, and since constructing the rules for the game, it has overseen the hiring and instructing of players and officials. *Note: "RFU" is actually an initialism, since the letters are pronounced individually rather than as a word.

From Quiz A to Z Acronyms

Answer: Car lot

Known in its native tongue as Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, we know this automobile manufacturer as Bavarian Motor Works. BMW remains one of the world's largest manufacturers of luxury cars and is well branded with a sleek logo that represents an airplane propeller, because the company started out making parts for airplane engines

From Quiz Random Acronyms

Answer: Deoxyribonucleic Acid

DNA is the material responsible for determining many of the physical qualities of a person.

From Quiz Lay Some Acronyms on Me

Answer: WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG stands for "What You See Is What You Get." It is pronounced "whizziwig." The first WYSIWYG program was a word processing program called Bravo that was developed in the 1970s. WYSIWYG programs today include Windows Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheets, FrontPage for webpage programming and many others. The incorrect answers stand for: "What You See Ain't What You Get," "What You See Bears Only A Faint Resemblance To What You Get," and "What You See Has A Semantic Meaning Which May Or May Not Be What You Get." No one intentionally programs software using these last three concepts.

From Quiz The Ever-Helpful Acronym

Answer: Situation normal, all fouled up

SNAFU is believed to have originated with the U.S. army during the Second World War. According to www.snafu.com, the term originated in 1941 with Army Signal Corpsmen Don Taylor and Johnny Paup who were stationed at Camp San Luis Obispo, California. They were using a new coding machine that converted messages into five-letter words, and one night the two were playing around with making up sentences that the words might represent. SNAFU was one of the code words, and it was Don Taylor who translated it to "Situation normal, all fouled up." (That's the polite version, by the way). However, American electronics engineers claim that both SNAFU and its counterpart FUBAR (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition - again, that's the cleaned-up version) were in use before the Second World War by telephone repairmen who were sent out to repair public telephone booths. In order to make their reports on arrival at the damaged booths, often over a very bad line, the repairmen resorted to the acronyms to indicate the degree of damage. None of them, I understand, ever claimed to have found any silky nighties and frilly undies in the damaged booths, nor did they sling mud at Fordham University or report sweet nothings and fond urges. Nowadays, SNAFU continues to be used to describe any ongoing mess.

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Last Updated Dec 14 2024 5:45 AM

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