AcronymFinder.com passes the 1 million definition milestone

I once took stock of the acronyms and abbreviations I had collected and I marveled. I had a list of about 1,000 definitions and they were in a word-processing document that I revised and reprinted periodically for my personal reference. The year was 1986, and I could never have imagined that someday that 40-page document would grow to be a 40,000-page document—1,000 times as large!

On 10 Dec 2010, the new abbreviation definition, MDS, a French abbreviation meaning "Atelier de Mineralisation des Solvants Organiques"—referring to an organic solvent facility—was verified and added to the Acronym Finder database, and, as a result, it has now passed the 1 million definition milestone. I'm amazed all over again. Not just because of the sheer size of the database, but because of the millions of users over the past 14 years the site has been online who have contributed new terms, corrections, and feedback that have made the site what it is today—the most comprehensive resource of its kind that has ever existed.

Less than two years ago, we rolled over 750,000 terms. Thanks to many new editors, we have grown very rapidly in a very short time. But every new term is still carefully reviewed and verified by a trained (and paid) editor. Since then, we've added an average of over 375 new terms every single day! And we're not finished, as we have many thousands more to check, many thousands more contributed each month, and many new acronyms and abbreviations are being invented every day, all over the world. Our mission, with your help, is to get them all into Acronym Finder.

So, someone might congratulate us on this milestone, but really, the congratulations and kudos go to all those users and contributors for helping us to build the largest human-edited database of acronyms and abbreviations. Thank you everyone! And stay tuned...

Sincerely,

Mike Molloy, CAW
(Chief Acronym Wrangler ;-)