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 ;-)

Acronym Finder rolls over 750,000 definitions!

On Saturday, January 31, 2009 at about 7:46pm EST, an editor reviewed and added the 750,000th meaning to the Acronym Finder database!

The abbreviation added was NPQTL, which stands for "National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning", an Australian education project to develop and implement national teacher competency standards.

Hitting the three quarters of a million milestone is pretty exciting, especially when we only "rolled over" the 600,000 count less than a year ago.

That means in just under 10 months our editors (paid, not volunteer) carefully reviewed, classified, and added 150,000 definitions!

We appreciate all the millions of wonderful Acronym Finder users around the world who have contributed to this database for the past nearly 11 years. There's no way we could have built such a comprehensive free resource without your help. Thank you, and keep those new abbreviations coming. We look forward to telling you when we reach the 1 million definition milestone!

Sincerely,

Mike Molloy
Chief Acronym Wrangler :-)

Acronym Finder rolls over 600,000 definitions

This morning, we added our 600,000th definition to the database!

In case you're wondering, the definition we added to reach this milestone was "Precision Fluency Shaping Program" or PFSP.

The Precision Fluency Shaping Program is a comprehensive therapy for the treatment of stuttering and was developed by Ronald L. Webster, PhD. It's now administered by Ross S. Barrett, M.A., CCC/SLP. Mr. Barrett is the Director of Fluency Programs and an instructor of Clinical Otolaryngology at the Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Since Acronym Finder went online in 1997 with over 43,000 definitions, the database has grown by over 550,000 human-edited terms! Our conservative estimates are that we have spent over 6,000 hours reviewing and editing the definitions we have so far. And we're still growing by almost 150 new terms every day of the year!

We thank all our loyal users from around the world who suggest new acronyms and abbreviations for what is arguably the largest and most comprehensive resource of its kind.

AcronymFinder.com grows to more than 200,000 unique abbreviations

Acronym Finder, the world’s largest and most respected acronym and abbreviation search engine reaches a new content milestone.

Estes Park, CO (PRWEB) January 8, 2008 – Mountain Data Systems, LLC, the publisher of Acronym Finder, the most comprehensive reference site for abbreviations and acronyms, reports that its database now contains over 200,000 unique abbreviations with over 585,000 abbreviation meanings.

Mike Molloy, founder and developer of the human-edited AcronymFinder.com, said, "This milestone demonstrates a depth of content in the human-edited Acronym Finder not found in any other abbreviation reference resource. Even respected printed dictionaries and dictionary websites have ‘only’ 200,000 to 300,000 unique words. We have over 200,000 unique terms, with nearly 600,000 definitions. And generally speaking, abbreviations are expressing more complex concepts and ideas than a single word.”

Acronym Finder's counting methodology is conservative -- each unique abbreviation’s meaning is counted only once, even if it appears in multiple categories. Molloy adds, “Some of our competitors put a single definition in five different categories, and count that as five definitions.”

Thanks to AcronymFinder.com’s loyal users and contributors, the total number of human-edited abbreviation definitions in Acronym Finder is expected to reach a record 600,000 in early 2008. Molloy says, “traditional word dictionaries grow by a few hundred new words each year, but Acronym Finder grows by about 5,000 verified abbreviation definitions each month.”

Molloy adds, “And in the unlikely event you can’t find the definition for an abbreviation at Acronym Finder, try the Acronym Attic, an unedited sister site. The ‘Attic’ has another 3 million or so candidate acronyms and abbreviations we haven’t reviewed yet.”

About AcronymFinder.com:

The privately held AcronymFinder.com is the largest and most authoritative acronym and abbreviation reference website and has been online for over 10 years. AcronymFinder.com receives more than 1 million unique visitors each month from over 210 countries.

Copyright (c) 2008, Mountain Data Systems

Press Contact
Mike Molloy
AcronymFinder.com
970-586-5556

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Happy Holidays and the OLPC XO Laptop

First, we here at Acronym Finder send our best wishes to everyone -- have a Happy Holiday season, and a wonderful 2008!

We very much appreciate your contributions, suggestions, feedback, and visits to Acronym Finder during 2007. We thank you for helping us be the best, most complete database of abbreviations and acronyms on the planet!

Not too long ago, we added a new abbreviation to our database, OLPC, which stands for One Laptop per Child. The OLPC initiative is a non-profit foundation by Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab. The laptop, designed with children and education in mind is called the "XO". The OLPC foundation's goal is to:

"provide children around the world with opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. To that end, OLPC is designing a laptop, educational software, manufacturing base, and distribution system to provide children outside of the first-world with otherwise unavailable technological learning opportunities."

Recently, OLPC started its Give One Get One (G1G1) program. You pay $400 for two laptops, one of which will be sent to benefit a child in one of the OLPC target areas in the world, and the other XO is sent you. In the US, you can take a charity deduction for about half this amount, plus, T-Mobile is offering a one year subscription to its T-Mobile Hotspots.

We ordered an XO laptop at the beginning of the G1G1 program and just got it last week. We're very impressed with it! It may look and feel a little like a toy, but it's a fully functional laptop with wireless connectivity and a surprising amount of power for the size and price. And we feel good about contributing a laptop to a child who can benefit from it.

If you're interested in the G1G1 program, hurry, as the program ends on December 31, 2007!

Yahoo! Tech mentions Acronym Finder

Yahoo! Tech's Robin Raskin mentioned Acronym Finder in her Aug 22, 2007 blog entry "Top-Notch Reference Sites for Students".

We're listed with some very nice company: RefDesk, Wikipedia, eHow, The Library of Congress, and more.

Thanks, Robin!

The World of Home Theater abbreviations

After years of wanting a large-screen high-definition television (HDTV), we recently purchased an HDTV, a receiver/DVD/speaker system, and a media center computer. As I did the product and technology research, I was amazed at how many acronyms and abbreviations I encountered.

Here's a tour of some of the most common ones I ran across, from electronics, the TV/HDTV world, and the Sony-specific ones related to the equipment I got.

Television, computers, and general: CATV, DVD, DVI, DVR, FCC, JPEG, LCD, MP3, NTSC, OSD, PAL, PC, PCM, QAM, RGB, SAP, VESA

HDTV, Home Theater, and audio: BD, DBFB, DRC, DTS, HD-DVD, HDCP, HDMI, HDTV, HTIB, HTPC, PBC

Sony specific: ACE, DCAC

Although I work with acronyms and abbreviations all day, I wasn't familiar with many of these! Fortunately, Acronym Finder knew what they meant!

The Times Online mentions Acronym Finder

Ben Macintyre, a columnist for The Times Online UK Edition, mentions Acronym Finder in an article about acronyms and abbreviations.

With just the right touch of both seriousness and humor, he asks,

"Why do we shorten world wide web to double-you double-you double-you, which has three times as many syllables?"

Good question! :-)

We used to list the extremely long Soviet acronym he mentions at the end of the article, but we were told by a Russian translator we trust that it's almost certainly made-up, so we "delisted it" (even though it's apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records).

Thanks, Ben.

Acronym Finder chosen as Refdesk.com SOTD

On May 17, 2007 Acronym Finder was the Site of the Day (SOTD) at Refdesk.com, one of the mostly highly regarded news and reference portal websites.

Bob Drudge has done an outstanding job with organizing and indexing the very best resources on the web. We're honored not only as a SOTD selection, but also as a Refdesk.com recommendation for acronym and abbreviation reference. Thanks, and keep up the good work, Bob!

AcronymFinder.com Celebrates Ten Year Anniversary

Acronym Finder, the world’s largest and most trusted acronym and abbreviation reference source, celebrates its 10^th year online.

Estes Park, Colorado May 1, 2007 – Mountain Data Systems LLC, the publisher of Acronym Finder (www.acronymfinder.com), announced that it is marking its tenth year online as the most respected and widely-used abbreviations reference source.

Mike Molloy, the founder and developer of AcronymFinder.com, said, “When I launched the site in 1997, I had two goals: I wanted to make available a database of abbreviations and acronyms I had collected since 1985; and I wanted to learn about web database programming. Acronym Finder wasn’t the first web-based abbreviations search site, but the day it went online, it became the largest human-edited collection available – and it still is.”

In early 1998, Acronym Finder was picked as a USA Today Hot Site, and was soon a Netscape Cool Site of the Day. Visits to the site soared, and many users began to suggest meanings for new abbreviations not found in the database. So many new meanings streamed in that Molloy had to develop a submission form to accept new entries and a custom software application to speed up verifying and editing all the new terms.

“I knew the abbreviations database might be very useful to others, but I had no idea how quickly it would be embraced and enhanced by web users all over the world,” Molloy says. People contributing to Acronym Finder were pioneers in what we now call “user-generated content.” The site launched with just over 43,000 entries and doubled in size in less than two years.

Molloy added, “Now, just ten years later, Acronym Finder has over 550,000 terms, and is still growing by an average of 200 new entries every day.” The site is queried around the clock by users worldwide, and in every conceivable discipline: K-12 and university students and educators; government and defense industry employees; medical transcriptionists; translators and interpreters, and anyone with a need to decipher the alphabet soup of letters that abbreviate often highly technical concepts.

The site’s rapid growth and popularity garnered further recognition in the press: two more USA Today Hot Site mentions; twice named as a PC Magazine Top 100 Website; Site of the Week in TechTV’s The ScreenSavers; and selected for the Britannica Internet Guide Award. Acronym Finder was also chosen for the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers, and it made the list of Best Free Reference Websites selected by the American Library Association’s Machine-Assisted Reference Section. Most recently, Acronym Finder and its owners were featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on January 13, 2007.

Acronym Finder also collaborates with, links with, or licenses content to other major web search and reference providers, including TheFreeDictionary.com, Reference.com, RefDesk.com, Ask.com, OneLook.com, and many others.

Molloy concluded, “We look forward to celebrating many more milestones in providing our high quality reference content to users around the world.”

About AcronymFinder.com:

The privately held AcronymFinder.com is the largest and most authoritative acronym and abbreviation reference website. Users from a wide variety of disciplines visit this free resource to look up acronyms from every imaginable subject area. Each month AcronymFinder.com receives over 1 million unique visitors from over 180 countries and answers more than 3 million acronym and abbreviation queries.

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Copyright © 2007, Mountain Data Systems, LLC

Press Contact
Mike Molloy
AcronymFinder.com
970-586-5556

No Name-Calling Week (NNCW), January 22-26, 2007, is an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.

Inspired by a young adult novel entitled "The Misfits" by author, James Howe, the No Name-Calling Week Coalition was created by Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, and consists of over 40 national partner organizations. GLSEN first organized the No Name-Calling Week in schools across the nation during 2004.

No Name-Calling Week 2007 is made possible, in large part, by a generous grant from Cisco Systems.

For more information visit the NNCW website at http://www.nonamecallingweek.org/

New acronym: Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) program

The new Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered programme (EDGE) takes an interesting approach to conservation. EDGE species are both Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered. Every mammal species has been scored according to the amount of unique evolutionary history it represents, and its conservation status according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

From this scoring system, EDGE produced a Top 100 EDGE mammals list. Amazingly, about two-thirds of these, including the number one listed Yangtze River dolphin, are receiving little or no conservation attention!

Started in January 2007 by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), EDGE aims to conserve the world's most Evolutionarily Distinct and
Globally Endangered species by implementing the research and conservation actions needed to secure their future.

The EDGE website has a blog, downloadable database of endangered species, and advanced search features. You can learn more here: http://www.edgeofexistence.org/home.asp

Acronym Finder in "Best Free Reference Web Sites"

Acronym Finder was selected as one of the "Best Free Reference Web Sites" for 2006 by the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association (ALA).

The list, in its eighth year, is published in the fall issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly and recognizes outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web. The complete index of all previous winners is also available at the RUSA site.

Acronym Finder featured in Wall Street Journal

We were thrilled to see Acronym Finder featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for Saturday, January 13, 2007.

Read the article here.

Acronym Finder knows postal codes!

Acronym Finder just became a lot smarter. We've added official US Postal Service ZIP codes (over 70,000) and official Canadian postal codes (over 800,000) to our database. To search postal codes, you don't have to do anything special -- just type them into the Acronym Finder search box and you'll get a result for any valid postal code in the United States or Canada.

You can search for any US ZIP code and get back information about the City, State, County, telephone area code, and time zone (including UTC offset), and whether that ZIP code observes daylight saving time (DST). For Canadian postal codes, we tell you the City, Province, area code, time zone and DST info. In addition, the result page shows you a scrollable/zoomable map with options for Satellite or Hybrid views, courtesy of Google Maps.

To see this in action, click on one of these example links: United States 20500 or Canada K1P 1J1

Please let us know if you have any feedback about this new feature, including other things you'd like to see on the postal code result page.

P.S. If we counted our new postal codes as abbreviations the way some of our competitors do, we just added over 870,000 new records to our 520,000+ human-edited database of acronyms and abbreviations. When you add the other 3 million or so definitions in our Acronym Attic, we have almost 4.5 million "definitions" in our database. Anyone can claim to be the largest acronym and abbreviation database in the world. We really are.

Add Acronym Finder search to Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)

One of the many new features of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7.0 is a convenient search box in the upper right of your browser window. This search box allows you to do web searches or other kinds of searches, and can contain a number of different search providers.

You can now install Acronym Finder as one of your search providers. All you have to do is click here to install it! (Note: you must be running IE7 to install this.)

AcronymFinder.com Sponsors Peak 10 Louisville Technology Acronym Bee

Annual competition to benefit the National Center for Family Literacy October 26
Estes Park, Colorado September 6, 2006 – Mountain Data Systems LLC, the publisher of Acronym Finder (www.acronymfinder.com) has logged on as a general sponsor of the Peak 10 Louisville Technology Acronym Bee (LTAB), an annual fund-raising event for the nationally recognized National Center for Family Literacy set for October 26.

LTAB is similar to the numerous successful corporate spelling bees held in communities around the nation every year. However, instead of spelling obscure words, adults participating in LTAB will define obscure technology acronyms. Participants form corporate teams to compete for the title, prizes, the LTAB Champion Trophy Cup and bragging rights. All of the proceeds will benefit the National Center for Family Literacy, recognized internationally as the leader in family literacy.

The event is organized by Peak 10, the Southeast's leading data center operator and managed services provider. It will be held October 26 at Louisville Slugger Field in Louisville, Kentucky from 11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

“We’re really pleased to be working with Peak 10 to help raise money for the National Center for Family Literacy. We feel that literacy is so fundamental to success in life and in technology. The Acronym Bee is a really fun concept, and it’s such a great fit with what we do,” said Mike Molloy, founder and developer of AcronymFinder.com.

More than 30 million adults in adults in the U.S. lack the skills to complete a job application, vote, use the Internet, or read a bedtime story to a child, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

“The support NCFL receives from this entertaining event enhances our ability to meet the educational and economic needs of at-risk children and families across the nation,” said NCFL founder and president Sharon Darling.

Shannon McIntyre-Alward, Director of Marketing at Peak 10, says, “We are pleased to coordinate LTAB, which since its inception, has raised nearly $50,000 for NCFL. We are thrilled to bring together so many people in the technology community for such a worthy cause. “

For more information, visit: 2006 Peak 10 Louisville Technology Acronym Bee

About AcronymFinder.com:

The privately held AcronymFinder.com is the largest and most authoritative acronym and abbreviation reference website. Users from a wide variety of disciplines visit this free resource to look up acronyms from every imaginable subject area. Each month AcronymFinder.com receives over 1 million unique visitors from over 180 countries and answers more than 3 million acronym and abbreviation queries.

About Peak 10:

Peak 10 is the leading independent data center operator and managed services provider in the eastern United States, delivering scalable, economical and reliable solutions for hosting and managing complex information technology infrastructure. The company combines its eight data centers and portfolio of managed services with localized engineering and support to serve market-leading companies including Rivals.com, Global Knowledge, Pergo, Churchill Downs, LendingTree and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Peak 10 owns and operates world class facilities in Nashville, Tenn.; Louisville, Ky.; Tampa and Jacksonville, Fla; and Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C. The company was recently ranked as one of the fastest growing private companies in America by Inc. magazine. For more information on data center solutions from Peak 10, visit www.peak10.com.

About the National Center for Family Literacy:

The National Center for Family Literacy, the worldwide leader in family literacy, was founded in Louisville in 1989. NCFL has impacted 1 million families and trained 150,000 teachers, practitioners and advocates. To learn more or to donate to this effort, call 1-877-FAMLIT1 or visit www.famlit.org.

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Copyright ©2006, Mountain Data Systems, LLC

Press Contacts

Mike Molloy
AcronymFinder.com
970-586-5556

Shannon McIntyre-Alward
Peak 10, Inc.
502-315-6007

Marvin Young
National Center for Family Literacy
502-584-1133 x173

Unfortunate Acronyms in the News

We're always amazed (and often amused) at how often an unfortunate acronym is developed to refer to a concept or organization.

Last month, the US organization National Association of Local Government Auditors (NALGA), based in Lexington, Kentucky, decided to change its name to Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA). Why the change? Well, "nalga" in Spanish means "butt" or "rump" which made the organization the butt (pun intended) of too many jokes and pranks. If this wasn't bad enough, the organization only owned the .org version of the NALGA domain name. Someone else owns the .com version of the site, and it has nothing to do with government auditors! You can read more at ALGA's new website, http://www.governmentauditors.org/

In another recent acronym incident, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) is trying to revoke the vanity plate owned by 74 year old Pat Niple. For the last 10 years, her plate read "NWTF" which referred to her business, Northwood Tree Farm. The Ohio BMV is apparently saying she can't use NWTF because it could be Internet/chat slang for "Now What the F***"! Never mind that NWTF also refers to "National Wild Turkey Federation" and has over a dozen other perfectly legitimate meanings. There is an BMV appeal process, so it will be interesting to see if she wins.

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AcronymFinder.com now has over 500,000 acronyms and abbreviations

Mountain Data Systems, LLC, publisher of Acronym Finder, the world’s most respected acronym and abbreviation reference resource, announced that its dictionary has grown to more than half a million human-edited definitions.

Estes Park, Colorado July 24, 2006 – The editors at Acronym Finder (www.acronymfinder.com), just added their 500,000th human-edited definition to the database.

Mike Molloy, founder and developer of AcronymFinder.com, said, “We are thrilled to reach this milestone in our site’s content. Since we’ve been on the web, our database has grown by over 1000%, making it the fastest growing dictionary of its kind. We verify, edit and add about 250 new terms every day, and our visitors suggest most of these new definitions. There’s no way we could create and maintain such a large dictionary without the help of people from all over the world working in every imaginable discipline.”

The half-million definitions in Acronym Finder are searchable by acronym or abbreviation, or by words contained in a meaning. Users can also sort and filter results on several major categories. The site offers free tools to improve convenience and usability for novice and power users alike. Users can also read the Acronym Finder blog for the latest news on the site and its features, and can interact with other site users in a forum.

Molloy believes Acronym Finder’s continued growth and success is not only about how many definitions there are -- it’s also about a quality user experience. “We listen carefully to suggestions and feedback from our users and we continue to work hard to be the world’s largest and best resource for acronyms and abbreviations.”

About AcronymFinder.com:

Launched with about 43,000 definitions, the privately held AcronymFinder.com quickly became the largest and most authoritative acronym and abbreviation reference website. Users from a wide variety of disciplines visit this free resource to look up acronyms from every imaginable subject area. Each month AcronymFinder.com receives over 1 million unique visitors from over 180 countries and answers more than 3 million acronym and abbreviation queries.

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Copyright © 2006, Mountain Data Systems, LLC

Press Contact
Mike Molloy
AcronymFinder.com
970-586-5556

April is National Poetry Month (NPM)

Each year in April, the Academy of American Poets (AAP) sponsors National Poetry Month (NPM), our featured abbreviation.

The AAP's FAQ about NPM explains:

"What is National Poetry Month? National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The concept was to increase the attention paid-by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. In the end, we hoped to achieve an increase in the visibility, presence, and accessibility of poetry in our culture. National Poetry Month has been successful beyond all anticipation and has grown over the years into the largest literary celebration in the world."

As I surfed the AAP's website, I was surprised that even a poetry organization has so many of its own acronyms: AAP, NPM, APLP, POTD

Technorati tags: abbreviations, acronyms, poetry, poems, Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month