Recently I sent out an article by email to a group of colleagues who were all attending a conference with me. Since they were all at the conference, I received automatic 'Out of office' replies from many of them. One such reply was interesting. It was from a colleague from a country where the primary language is not English. It went as follows:

"I'm out of the office. I will respond to your message ASAP."

Made me realize how lack of complete familiarity with a language makes it hard to recognize when the intended meaning of a word or phrase or acronym is different from its literal meaning!

There's probably a word in linguistics for this phenomenon of discrepancy between literal and actual meaning. Is there?

The meaning seems clear and understandable to me.

"ASAP" means, "as soon as possible," so your colleague will respond upon his return. How do you see that as being a malapropism or other misapprehension of English meaning?

Doesn't ASAP in common usage mean 'immediately' or 'right now'?

The way I've heard it used, it has more of a sense of urgency, and does not mean the same as 'As soon as I am able to.'

Or perhaps the sense of urgency and immediacy is conveyed by the tone of the voice and other non-verbal signals

I agree with Geoff that ASAP is an acronym for "As Soon As Possible." While you may have wanted to instill a sense of urgency, some other term would (or should) have provided a more rapid response.

"RUSH!" "URGENT" "MO SKOSHI HAJIWA"

But if you sent an eail to their office, knowing they were at your conference, how could you expect a rapid response?

As a couple of others have said, it stands for "as soon as possible", so I can't see anything unusual about the out of office message.

I agree that when a boss asks for something to be done ASAP the real meaning is "Do it NOW!", but that's only an implication.

Borrowing from Kalleh's field (medical) perhaps, "stat?" (From Latin, "statim")

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Borrowing from Kalleh's field (medical) perhaps, "stat?" (From Latin, "statim")

Not "stet", from proofreading

Here is an interesting abstract of a research article that talks about 'stat' and 'ASAP' orders.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10127298

Round these parts folk have a tendency to say, "straight the way," as opposed to, "straight away."

Gives me the heebeejeebees.

Latin stet means literally "let it be". It is in the subjunctive mood.

Latin statim originally meant "firmly, steadily, steadfastly, unyieldingly" (at least in Plautus' time), but then came to mean "forthwith, straightway, at once, immediately, instantly". These definitions are from the predominately 19th century edited version of the Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon. What I noticed immediately was that straightway for what I would say and write as straightaway. I have only heard straight the way in Jacobean Biblical English "make straight the way of the Lord". They do have slightly different meanings, straightway (in English) does not have the sense of immediately, but straightaway does. And coincidentally, our street is ultimately from the Latin via stricta which means literally "straight way".

[Added dropped letter.]

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our street is ultimately from the Latin via sricta which means literally "straight way".

Nothing to do with "strait", meaning narrow, I suppose? Via stricta could mean "narrow way".

You know, arnie, I imply mixed up a couple of words and etymologies. English street is from Latin strata 'paved road' < sterno 'to extend, stretch out; cover, pave'. Strait is from the word I was thinking of, strictus < stringo 'to draw tight, bind; clip off, prune; be harsh, cruel'.

Not quite sure how I got the stories all mixed up, but i did. I am sure I heard or read the via stricta etymology somewhere.

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As a couple of others have said, it stands for "as soon as possible", so I can't see anything unusual about the out of office message.

I am late to the party with this, but, being the literalist you all know me to be, I'd not think ASAP would be appropriate here. To me, ASAP, while meaning "as soon as possible," would mean as soon as that person possibly could, even being out of the office. I'd not include that acronym (or is it an initialism, arnie?) in my out of office reply...unless I'd be able to answer the emails right away and not upon my return.

But, then, I do take things literally more than others do.

But surely the literal meaning is "as soon as possible." It's only in common usage where it means "immediately" (or "stat" :P)

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Oh, I've misunderstood you a bit, but if it were impossisible for you to reply to emails until you returned to your office, then that stll is as soon as possible isn't it? Even literally.

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This has been an interesting discussion. I apologize if it feels like I'm dragging this on (out?) with this comment.

So there are several phrases we can potentially use:

As soon as possible (ASAP)
As soon as I am able to
As soon as I can
As soon as it is feasible
Whenever I can / am able to / it is possible / it is feasible

(The 'possibilities' are many!)

Some of these choices are less ambiguous than others.

For me this discussion is a reminder of a basic tenet of communication: be careful about the exact choice of word because what you (the writer or speaker) think the word means may not be what the reader or listener thinks it means.

Wasn't there a quote in Alice in Wonderland about this, where Alice says something like "when I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean..."

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asn't there a quote in Alice in Wonderland about this, where Alice says something like "when I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean..."

Humpty Dumpty. But then again if you hang around here for more than a few minutes you'll come to realise that Alice is my own little obsession.

For what its worth, although ASAP stands for "as soon as possible", like Metic, I have heard it used when the intended meaning had been a much more agressive "do it now". It seems that when some people, especially people who are in a position to boss you about, say "I want it ASAP" they mean "I want it as soon as possible an it had better be possible right away or there'll be trouble."

Not saying it's right, just that it's an impication I've certainly encountered.

Welcome aboard, Metic.

I agree that shades of meaning can be nuanced for the expanded phrase ASAP, but that it is rarely expanded in conversation of when written down. In fact, when spoke these days, it pronounced as an acronym /ʔeɪsæp/. There have been studies in linguistic pragmatics (something akin to the older study of rhetoric) on speech acts (link).

When saying something in an overheated lecture hall like "It sure is hot in here", while the literal meaning of the sentence is true, my intention in uttering it is not to inform my audience what they already know, but to suggest that somebody (anybody) open a window or do something to make it cooler in the room. With ASAP: as an acronym for me it means and implies 'immediately', but in its expanded form it depends on the context and intonation as to whether it means a neutral and literal "as soon as possible" or whether it implies "drop everything right now and attend to this!"

Solving the nuances incorrectly can lead to trouble. Often when women say "It's awfully hot in here," I tend to expect sex while they just want me to turn down the thermostat.

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Humpty Dumpty. But then again if you hang around here for more than a few minutes you'll come to realise that Alice is my own little obsession.

Ah, Metic, you definitely hit upon one of Bob's favorite subjects.

Don't you think, though, that we all would have understood that out of office reply, whether we think it appropriate or not? I might not have used it myself, but I'd expect the person to get back to me upon his/her return.

Yes, the intended meaning of the out-of-office reply was evident to me. This is going to seem nit-picky and pompous, but let me explain why I found this so interesting.

A few months ago I heard an expert talk about health. He said that good health is a condition when you are not aware of your body. So if you are unwell, you are constantly aware of the pain or lack of function caused by illness.

In a similar manner, I believe that when language is used well to write prose, you do not notice the language. If a reader or listener notices a word or sentence because its meaning is ambiguous and has to put in extra work to interpret it, then there is room for improvement.

Of course, this does not apply to poetry (which sometimes is a big mystery to me!)

In a similar manner, I believe that when language is used well to write prose, you do not notice the language. If a reader or listener notices a word or sentence because its meaning is ambiguous and has to put in extra work to interpret it, then there is room for improvement.

I'd have to disagree with you there. Some styles draw attention to the language. What you are suggesting is sort of like saying that "good" prose does not use metaphor, but only neutral, literal language. Even if that were possible, I don't think it would be a good and necessary thing.

And ambiguity permeates the language from the ground up because there are few words that are not polysemous. It is not limited to the lexicon either. Anybody who has worked in computational linguistics knows how tough it is to find actual sentences (ones that occur in corpora) that have only one parsing from a purely syntactic point of view. The mechanism in us that parses utterances and writing uses information and hints from semantics, syntax, pragmatics, and the historical context of the conversation or article/book.

One also notices the language itself, if the dialect it's written in is substantially different from the readers. This can be historical (e.g., Shakespeare) or regional (e.g., US vs UK).

As for the earlier point, as I get older, I'd have to agree with it. though there are times when I am aware of my body and not because it hurts or I'm ill. I'm thinking of the good feelings one gets, for example after working out or running.

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A few months ago I heard an expert talk about health. He said that good health is a condition when you are not aware of your body. So if you are unwell, you are constantly aware of the pain or lack of function caused by illness.

I can understand the linguistic point that was made, though I don't agree with it. After all, many feel that way about language (Strunk and White, some English teachers, etc.). I am less in agreement about the health statement. I think some people are very sensitive about how their body feels (is there a word for that?), while others are not. It's an interesting point of view, though. I hadn't heard it before.