Heard this one about the big-footed auntie?...

I'm still on abbreviations, and in today's shortish musing (hey, it's Friday, after work), some stuff here from my schoolday collection, plus newer ones.

First off, I realised there are more single-syllable acronyms than MAD and our own expressway PIE. There is this gem, IOU (I owe you, hence also an initialism!), DINK (double income, no kids), and I love this one...

SKIN -- spend kids' inheritance now!

From the sports world comes WAGs (wives and girlfriends of sports personalities).

These days, there is BFF (best friend forever). But from my pen-pal schoolday time, there was FRANCE (Friendship remains and never can end) and ITALY (I trust and love you). In an earlier posting, I had already mentioned the initialism RTS (roaming the streets).

The medical degree MBBS was Mouth Big, Brain (or Body) Small.

And while today's Internet users use MYOB as part of their slang language, it had long been used as such, that is, Mind your own business.

Then there's this politically incorrect acronym NAIR. It is so incorrect, you have to ask me about it.

During geography class lessons in my time, how did we remember the top-to-bottom order of the three reserviours at the time? Easy... SPM, or Singapore Prime Minister. So it was Seletar, Peirce and last of all, MacRitchie.

The Great Lakes of North America? No problemo. HOMES -- Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.

And finally (drum roll), what's this teaser heading above about a big-footed auntie? Hated trigonometry, like I did? Some help came in the form of the mnemonic TOA CAH SOH, which in Hokkien becomes "big-footed aunt"! To recall it all, the Tangent of an angle is the Opposite side over the Adjacent side, the Cosine of an angle is the Adjacent side over the Hypotenuse, and the Sine of an angle is the Opposite side over the Hypotenuse.

Eureka!