Well, I use google more than you can imagine, but I generally don’t use it for looking up acronyms like that because a lot of times they are “socially specific”. I’ve tried doing that other times, but I’m just one of those folks who is very anti-acronym and usually I ignore completely anyone that starts using them in a thread.
The reason for this is I’ve been inundated by them for over 30 years with the military, government and so forth and it’s fine in CONTEXT, but out of context (talking about a gun-totin’ gal for instance) they have NO context. If you’re writing a white paper or an article it’s always polite and correct to say things like “White House Communications Agency (WHCA)” and then go on later to use the abbreviation. But to plot it down in the middle of a conversation where the definition wasn’t given original isn’t very helpful. Especially not for folks like me simply blaze over acronyms out of pure, unadulterated hatred for the things. :)
It was explained earlier in this thread.Please see above at 1956