Really glad to see that The Organisation of Really Contrived Acronyms (ORCA) has been reactivated. Thought that a few people in here might like to contribute. Bioinformatic tools seem to be particularly guilty of this, I've been guilty of a few myself.
So what are some of biostars' readers favourites.
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BioStar - BIOinformatic Special Tactics And Rescue
Also another relevant post: CRAC: funny and/or weird names for bioinformatics tools
We often get asked what Ensembl is an acronym for. But it isn't an acronym at all. We use the word "ensemble", to mean bringing together because we bring together data, and we incorporate the EMBL from the European Molecular Biology Lab (who pay about 2/3 of Ensembl employees' wages) and that's it, ENS doesn't stand for anything. It's really a play on words that incorporates somebody else's acronym.
Maybe we should just make something stupid up for the ENS:
Ensembl of Nucleotide Sequences from the European Molecular Biology Lab
Bonus of not adding the e back is that you get a recursive acronym a la GNU.
When and why did the name change from ensEMBL to Ensembl? Or has it always Ensembl and I was just deluded for many years?
Well hitting the Internet Archive and the literature finds it has been Ensembl since at least 2000:
- http://web.archive.org/web/20000815203739/http://www.ensembl.org/
- http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11752248
However like you I remember the name being represented as "ensEMBL" back then. It could be this was an affectation of those who knew the origin of the name and wanted to make the relationship between Ensembl and EMBL-Bank more obvious to the community.
I have a hazy memory of ensEMBL being written on the entry page of the web site
I got it in my head that it was ensEMBL and it has taken many years to shift. (I think a lot of comments in my code still have it as ensEMBL.)
Please note that Emily_Ensembl is using "EMBL" to mean the EMBL-Bank nucleotide sequence database (part of the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), which is a member of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration). Which was originally established at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) back in the early 1980s.
My favourite at the time (2004) was PORNSTAR, which might have even been written PORN*. I can't remember what it did and I am too scared to do a search for it... at work, at least.
The one that instigated the revival was emailed to me by a colleague: the feline genome web browser, Genome Annotation Resource FIELDs (GARFIELD).
Online Dog In Ensembl? (http://www.ensembl.org/Canis_familiaris/Info/Index)
My current favorite is UPARSE
Did you mean: PARSE
Search Results have head up arse - Idioms and phrases - The Free Dictionary idioms.thefreedictionary.com/have+head+up+arse Definition of have head up arse in the Idioms Dictionary. have head up arse phrase. What does have head up arse expression mean? Definitions by the largest ...
UPARSE OTU clustering - Drive5.com www.drive5.com/uparse/ UPARSE is a new OTU clustering method to be published soon in Nature Methods. Benchmark results show that UPARSE produces much more accurate OTUs, .
True story:
Some that come to mind:
- DARNED: DAtabase of RNa EDiting
- PSICQUIC: Protemics Standard Initiative Common QUery InterfaCe
- STRING: Search Tool for Recurring Instances of Neighbouring Genes
- EMBOSS has many examples of fun program names...
I have to admit to liking DoriC (Database of oriC regions), although I can't help but wonder which Doric was the inspiration.
Keith Bradnam has recently commented on the apparent acronym used for BeAtMuSiC, quite how that name relates to the full name of "prediction of Binding Affinity Changes upon MutationS" is a mystery.
I always think of chocolate milk when I see "PSICQUIC"
We were specifically instructed to create a resource that did what it said on the tin (or rather we were told that the name on the tin should clearly indicate what the resource did!)
Hence, EBI metagenomics was called what it is, rather than one of it's original proposed names (e.g. GAIA - metaGenome Analysis, Interpretation and Archiving) :-)
In 2005 I wrote a web application called InSiPiD: Integration Site Pipeline and Database:
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Is Biostar itself an acronym? :-)
Much like the ensEMBL/Ensembl thing, this is actually the first time that I have realised that it is "Biostar" and not "BioStars". (I thought it was "BIOinformatics STARS" - for aren't we all? :op )
but it's still www.biostars.com .....
indeed, there is an inconsistency there - the original name was Biostar but when it came to domain names only biostars.org was available. All things considered Biostars would probably be more appropriate of a name - we're just waiting for a cease-and-desist order from the motherboard maker as motivation to change the name
Isn't the American Association Against Acronym Abuse (AAAAA) taking care of this?
Given the contrived nature of some acronyms, and the pedant nature of ORCA, perhaps it should be re-branded as the Organisation of Really Contrived Abbreviations (ORCA).
I don't follow. ORCA is not particularly pedantic and, even if it were, "Acronym" seems wholly appropriate given its definition. If it were pendantic in nature, the big thing to change would be "Organisation"...
Now I get to put my pedant hat on :-)
Acronym refers to the use of initial letters (commonly on the first, but sometime more) of the words in the phrase being abbreviated. In many of the more fun examples of abbreviations that appear to be acronyms, a mixture of letters appearing in the phrase is used, not just those from the start of the words. A common example would be XML (eXtendable Mark-up Language), which would not count as a acronym due to the use of 'X' instead of 'E'.
OK. But what has this do to with ORCA? (XML is not in ORCA) Is it the "of" that is the issue? Or are you suggesting that it should become "Abbrevations" to let things like XML into the fold?
well it ought to be Abbreviation rather then Acronym - otherwise it would fall under the Department of the Redundancy Reduction Department.
Hmmm. If I wasn't too lazy to change the logo then I would probably change it. As it is, ORCA is not pedantic and will accept Abbreviations if they are sufficiently worthy/contrived!
How about: "biology inspired objectives imparting frequently obtuse random mathematical algorithms that irritate computer scientists"
"...INstigating frequently obtuse..." ? (Or where you going for ImpartiNg, which is cheating! :op)
I was cheating but I do prefer INstigating :->
Linking to a related post CRAC: funny and/or weird names for bioinformatics tools
Worse as it confuses the name CRAC, which it is also the name for a DNA-RNA hybrid technique