1990s, as the abbreviation came to be adopted in computing. Today, a bot is any piece of software that runs an automated task, such as in searching the internet or playing computer games. It has also become a suffix, with the function of the bot specified in the other part of the word, as in searchbot, infobot, spambot, spybot and warbot.
As early as 1923, George Bernard Shaw had applied the word robot to people who act mechanically, without emotion, usually because of the repetitive work they have to do. Now anyone accused of unthinking or automaton-like behaviour risks attracting the label. A movie star called Samantha who has taken on the same type of character too many times (in the eyes of the critic) might have her roles described as Samanthabots. And in 2009 Obamabots arrived — people who support Barack Obama without really knowing anything about him.
79. UFO — alternative forms (20th century)
Words can be shortened in several different ways, as other parts of this book illustrate (§§3, 57, 92). Abbreviations are a natural process. They save time and energy. They can save money, if the cost of a message depends on the number of letters it contains. And they can be a sign of social or professional identity. People who belong to the same group, such as doctors, lawyers and plumbers, tend to use the same abbreviations when they talk and write to each other.
It’s an impossible task to list all the shortened words in a language, because new ones are always being created. The largest collections in English, such as Gale’s Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary, contain well over half a million items. Note the title. This book is trying to ensure that all kinds of shortening are included — words like info (‘information’) and poss (‘possible’), as well as acronyms (strings of letters pronounceable as words, such as OPEC, the ‘Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’) and initialisms (where the individual letters are pronounced separately, such as BBC).
There are some interesting mixes of the two types. How do you say the word UFO? Is it ‘you eff oh’ or ‘youfoh’? Both are possible. Similarly, some people pronounce internet FAQs as ‘eff eh cues’ and some as ‘facks’. LOL in internet and texting slang means ‘laughing out loud’: it’s pronounced either as ‘ell oh ell’ or as ‘loll’ (§94). In American English, a VP (vice-president) is sometimes a ‘vee pee’ and sometimes a ‘veep’ — and the spelling veep is quite often seen in print these days.
But what does UFO mean? For most people, it is ‘unidentified flying object’. But for some it stands for ‘Ultralight Flight Organisation’. In the British military, it could be a ‘Unit Families Officer’. In physics it could be ‘universal fibre optic’. In computing, ‘user files online’. In medicine, an ‘unidentified foreign object’. In the events that take place in online fantasy worlds, it stands for ‘unwanted falling objects’. These are just some of the usages recorded in the dictionaries. There are at least twenty for UFO, and some acronyms have hundreds.
The ‘flying saucer’ sense of UFO, along with its ‘youfoh’ pronunciation, has allowed it to be the base for other words. In particular, the study of UFOs is called ufology and the students ufologists. Ufological and ufoish are also found. It’s unusual for an acronym to generate a family of words in this way.
Acronyms are not just for technical and business uses. Many occur in everyday speech, and have done for centuries — IOU (‘I owe you’) dates from the 17th century, as do NB, eg and pm, all derived from Latin words, though most people would be unable to say what the letters stand for (nota bene ‘note well’, exempli gratia ‘for the sake of example’, post meridiem ‘after noon’). RIP (‘requiescat in pace’, conveniently also ‘rest in peace’) and RSVP (‘repondez s’il vous plait’) date from the 19th century. During the 20th century we find such forms as ETA (‘estimated time of arrival’), FYI (‘for your information’) and ASAP (‘as soon as possible’). The internet has also introduced a large number of acronyms, some motivated by the need to keep words as short as possible in text-messaging and tweeting (§92).
CD-ROM is an interesting mix, because it brings together an initialism (CD) and an acronym (ROM). The first part is sounded letter- by-letter, the second part is a whole word. Nobody would ever say ‘see dee ahr oh em’. Similarly, JPEG files are pronounced ‘jay peg’. Organisations which have three identical letters sometimes cheat: the American Automobile Association, or AAA, is often called Triple A. And IOU is unusual too, because it starts off as an acronym and ends up using a letter to replace a whole word. It should really be IOY.
80. Watergate — place-name into word (20th century)
On 17 June 1972 a group of men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington. The evidence of Republican political involvement, and the attempted cover-up, grew into a national scandal which led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974.
The political fallout was great, but the linguistic fallout was longer-lasting. The - gate suffix became a permanent feature of the language, used by the media to refer to any actual or alleged scandal or cover-up, political or otherwise — especially one which leads to the downfall of the implicated person. It was a very convenient form, short and to the point. Perfect for headlines (§88).
Most -gate words have a very short life, lasting only as long as a scandal remains news. Who now remembers what Baftagate was about in 1991? (A voting controversy surrounding the BAFTA film and television awards.) What was Camillagate? (A tape- recording of an intimate telephone conversation between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles in 1992.) How long will BP-gate (from the 2010 oil-spill disaster) remain in the public domain? Or the repercussions of the Iraq War continue to be called Iraq-gate? Only one thing is certain: other coinages are waiting in the wings to replace them.
Place-names quite often end up as everyday words in English, developing a more general meaning in the process. People talk about another Watergate, meaning ‘another scandal of the Watergate kind’. Governments and civil services become identified with their locations (Whitehall, the White House). Battles rarely make it into general use, with just a few exceptions, such as balaclava and armageddon. If you’re engaged in a decisive and final contest of some kind, you will meet your Waterloo. And there is the remarkable verb use of Trafalgar, attested since the late 19th century in the phrase Trafalgar Square — to subject someone to a soap-box tirade. ‘He just Trafalgar Squared me.’ It’s not common, but it’s there in the dictionary records.
Most place-names enter the general language in relation to products. We readily make new nouns out of wine locations, and some become so widely used that they lose their capital letter. ‘That’s a lovely Bordeaux. Have a glass of champagne.’ Other place-name drinks include martini, cognac, port, sherry and bourbon. The same applies to foodstuffs: Brie (cheese),
