POTUS: President of the United States
SCOTUS: Supreme Court of the United States
FLOTUS: First Lady of the United States

zmj introduces POTUS ("other words, he hasn't a chance being elected POTUS"), linking to Wikipedia's very brief mention. Quinion has a full and interesting article about all three words.

OED says "Originally a newspaper wire and telegraph code word; later used esp. among White House staff before passing into more general use." It gives the first cite (which Quinion quotes) as follows, and Quinion says this is the very first acronym.

1903 Fort Wayne (Indiana) News 25 Feb. 5/2 This is the way a message is sent on the wire: T potus, ixs, wi km to Kevy... This jargon of letters conveys the following information: The president of the United States, it is said, will communicate to King Edward VII.

Question: Would you view this 1903 quote as an actual English use of POTUS as a word, or merely as a reference to it being used in a non-english argot?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

T potus, ixs, wi km to Kevy

Viddy well my little droogies how this telegraphese brought Edwardian English to absolute ruin before WW2 was fought. Everything means Cole Porter these days.

Also, it was for the benefit of Mr Abbreviator.

Well, as you all know here, I am not a fan of acronyms or abbreviations. I would never in a million years use POTUS, and I'd not know what it meant.

I have found there are those who really love acronyms, though. I think it makes them feel special to spew off a number of letters that no one else understands. I find my own field of nursing that way, and surely many on OEDILF lord over the rest of us their ability to write paragraphs with just acronyms.

But may I revert to the question that has me curious: "Would you view this 1903 quote as an actual English use of POTUS as a word, or merely as a reference to it being used in a non-english argot?"

And if it is a citable use, how can it be the first? Wouldn't the earlier uses, to which it refers, be equally citable?

Well, I wouldn't cite that as a use of the word and I'm fairly sure John Simpson wouldn't either. On the Balderdash and Piffle program they rejected stuff with a lot less reason than you have here. AT best it could be considered a bit of technical jargon and unless it were used in an otherwise English sentence (which it clearly isn't) I don't see how we could be justified in calling it an English word.

This is Telegraphese, not English. Many abbreviations were used in Telegraphese in order to reduce the (expensive) cost of a telegram.

When I started in the travel business every company of note had a telegraphic address which you could use to save the wordage of the full address (Thomas Cook's was "cookbook"). Plus there was a whole range of abbreviations that could be used to request all sorts of facilities, and these were published in travel agents' reference manuals.

They survive (in spirit at least) in the abbreviations that are still used in computerised reservation systems.

quote:

"Would you view this 1903 quote as an actual English use of POTUS as a word, or merely as a reference to it being used in a non-english argot?"

merely as a reference...not as a word.

But wouldn't Telegraphese simply be a new way of using English, and not a whole new language? I would tend to count those abbreviations as technical jargon, but still part of our language. Of course, I would imagine this appalls many of you because then we'd have to start accepting txt as part of our language.

Interestingly, Shu and I were out to dinner tonight, and I heard the dad at the next table telling his kids that snafu was not a vocabulary word; it is just initials, he said. It reminded me of this thread. Still, snafu is in 17 of the Onelook Dictionaries. I'd call it a word. I guess the difference between snafu and potus is that the former is much more commonly used.

quote:

But wouldn't Telegraphese simply be a new way of using English, and not a whole new language?

It's a nice distinction, of course, but I would suggest that a message which cannot be understood by a speaker of a language has a justifiable claim to be considered a different language.

Most people wouldn't be able to understand telegraphese or textspeak without a measure of training and so each has grounds to be considered a different language to my mind. But as I said, it's a nice distinction.

Like many jobs, mine refers to initialisms constantly. They are only understood by people in the same field, and are therefore jargon. Similarly, POTUS would have only been understood by newspaper people and is therefore jargon. If, however, they had printed the acronym in their paper (preferably with an explanation the first time it was used) when referring to the doings of the president, it would have entered the lexicon. A mere report of the use of the acronym itself does not really count.

I'd suggest that telegraphese and SMSese are more codes than separate languages. Once you have a list of "words", no other grammar is needed. The mapping from telegraphese is trivial. Try translating a French text with no knowledge of French and a French-English dictionary. Hey, but that's probably just me.

Interesting question. When does an encoding become a separate language? Indeed, can an encoding be considered a separate language or would all possible encodings necessarily represent one language.
Clearly I could replace all the symbols -i.e. the letters - of a language with another set of arbitrary symbols and providing I have the decoding routine I still have the key to the language and it's essentially the same. But what if I apply a more mathematical routine? Now it's not a simple encoding, it's an encryption and I can make that as hideously complex as I like so that the result is no longer even recognisable as language. Nevertheless the reverse routine will decrypt it back into plain text. Is this then essentially the same thing? I'd say not. Sure the mapping in the case of a "telegraphese" encoding is trivial but the mapping in the case of numeric encryption is anything but. Nevertheless it's still possible and without "grammar" being involved. Yes, I'd agree that "telgraphese" is a code rather than a language but that's EXACTLY why I'd say that to cite something written in it as an example of English usage is not legitimate.