In linguistics we call this 'back-formation', where a plausible evolution gets assigned a fictitious etymology. Example: burgle, derived in reverse from burglar.
My very favorite mainframe example: IPL. Can be used as verb, noun, modifier, almost any 'part of speech'. All from an acronym. Marvelous. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Peter Bishop Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2018 6:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: (External):Re: Ask the experts about running things I went to an IBM buzzfest at the rename announcement (390 to z IIRC, it was a while back) where it was said that z stood for "zero down time". Peter On Wed, 7 Nov 2018 16:09:25 -0800, Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote: >Good thing it was before the days of z/OS. What does the z in z/OS stand for? >AFAIK "zarchitecture" is not an English word. > >Charles > > >-----Original Message----- >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] >On Behalf Of scott Ford >Sent: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 3:20 PM >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: Ask the experts about running things > >God, I love it. Buzz words, after 40 yrs you heard many it not all. >I have been mentoring two guys and have hit these ...it gets weird when >you talk from a sysprog/dev point of view and try to explain it to >newbies .. > >Regards, >Scott > >On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 5:58 PM Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I hired a tech writer once who had been taught in school that you >> should introduce every acronym the first time you used it: >> >> "Whizbang/390 runs on any current release of Multiple Virtual Systems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
