Yankee .Abbreviations.

Otago Witness, Issue 2497, 22 January 1902, Page 77

Yankee .Abbreviations.

'Tile Nice. Boy" write*: — "The growing tendency of tlu« lightning pxpre'u age is to cut down everything which nuolies waste of time, or bieatli, or ink, and m America especially tlioy are extremely unwilling to put a superfluous letter into .1 word, or to pronounce a single ••yl lable which they do not regard ab absolutely indispensable. They began by shortening words like ductor and magazine to 'dot.' and 'map.,' and they e\en went the length of tutting down surname' 1 «urh as Johnson and Wil-ou, which they curtailed to 'Johuse' and "So f:u they remained strictly within the realm of the intelligible, but when they go a s-tep faithor, and take to comersing by ineain of mere Miitials. it take 1 - a careful fctudent of Chc-otaw ->r Pu^htoo to be able to unra\cl their meaning. Homo >i us on thjs side are familiar with such abbre\ .ati'ins as S Y.L. for Vee you later,' and (' V K. foi '(onmdei yourself kl^rd,' winch, by the \wn, is r. c har.'if tcribtieplly Amen(<n fOl m of gifptini? But when the same thing is carried on with a sort of Artemiir Waid Luim of bUfliiuu da its ioLuul»uoo,

it is enough to baffle Sherlock Holmes himself to extract any meaning from these- dark sayings "For instance, you meet a man on a wet morning, and remark, 'Nasty morning this.' " "Yes,' he replies, ' S.B O. and hurries away, leaving you to spend the next half hour in unravelling the fact that he means to say it is 'Simply blooming orful.' "The same individual is fond of going into a bar and perplexing the Toiing lady behind it by asking blandly for a 'W.K. As there are very few things that a barmaid does not know, and she makes a pretty good guess at the rest, she generally serves him with his 'Whisky cold,' which is what he wants. But all the same, it is a strain upon her intellectual powers the first time it happens. "'After this, to be as'ied for an 'AB.,' meaning 'Arf of Bitter,' is comparatively simple; and similarly 'P.F.A.. mi».-,' naturally conveys to her astute intelligence the meaning of 'Pint of four arf ' "On the other hand, it rather takes the sentiment out of the situation when the ardent suitor, pressing the knees of Ins 163 trousers to the damp, discolouring turf, murmurs in a heart-brokeri \oice, 'Say A.R. and not G.B. "This sort of Morse .?ode, or conversational shorthand, will no doubt increase considerably before, like other cranks of its kind, it dies a natural death, but, at any rate, in the meantime, it has this advantage, that it tends to quicken the wits of those who are compelled to make it out as much as the guessing of double acrostics or the solution of 'pigs in clover' puzzles, which have also had their little clay and died. We can only say, to use for once a phrase which has been for years consecrated by hallowed associations — R.1. P."