IBM classes in US in early 1980's seemed to consistently pronounce CICS as C-I-C-S (see-eye-see-ess), so that's the custom we adopted and taught at our installation when we started using the product.
One of our SysProgs got heavily involved with CICS development in Hursley Park, U.K. in 1990's because of some design issues we were having with CICS, and IBM ended up paying his way to visit IBM Hursley for a week. At IBM Hursley they consistently called it "Kicks", so our CICS support SysProgs also got used to that convention as well. Our applications people continued to call it C-I-C-S. Not sure which source to take as authoritative, but "Kicks" takes less effort to say -- which makes it a logical choice if you have to reference the product very frequently in conversation. JC Ewing On 5/9/21 1:57 AM, Meir Zohar wrote: > CICS pronounced Chicks/Thicks in Italy/Spain ... > Took a moment to figure out what the speaker was talking about ... > > MZ > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of > David Spiegel > Sent: Sunday, May 9, 2021 6:42 AM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: Pronunciations (spun off of another thread) > > Hi Bob, > This reminds me of a story. > Back in 2000, I was doing an ACF2 to RACF conversion and one of the > customer's people kept saying Ra-Keff (instead of Rack-Eff.) This REALLY got > on my nerves. > > As an aside, a former colleague (with a British accent) always says ZOSS > (instead of Zed-Oh-Ess or Zee-Oh-Ess). > (He's not really British.) > > Have you ever heard ANYONE say IMZ (instead of Eye-Emm-Ess)? > > Regards, > David > > On 2021-05-08 17:02, Bob Bridges wrote: >> I grew up with "doss" and "see-eye-see-ess", but even here in the East I've >> heard "kicks" often enough that I can adjust now if that's what the current >> crowd uses. Actually I think sysprogs say "kicks" more than application >> programmers, for some reason. >> >> I've heard "sicks" just once, I believe, but I don't remember where the >> speaker was from. >> >> "Rack-eff", of course, so I guess I could excuse either "pee-rack-eff" or >> "prack-eff". Dunno what it is, though. >> >> --- >> Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 >> >> /* One of the quickest ways I've found to look foolish is to state >> positively what God will not do. -Bob Bridges */ >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On >> Behalf Of David Spiegel >> Sent: Friday, May 7, 2021 17:10 >> >> (I'm also from Southern Ontario -- I say doss and cics.) >> ... -- Joel C. Ewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
