Acronyms and Mnemonics: Learn More with Less

Names of The Great Lakes

We probably all remember some useful acronyms from our school years, useful for remembering groups names for places, historical events, etc. One of easiest and most useful acronyms is for remembering the names of the five Great Lakes that border between the U.S. and Canada. The names of The Great Lakes are of course “Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior” and the acronym is of course, H.O.M.E.S. The above is a good example of an acronym. A “mnemonic” (a short phrase) is also especially helpful for lengthy lists or tasks that need to be remember in a correct order.

Remembering the animal classification order from Biology was pretty difficult (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species) but a mnemonic sentence makes it easy. Just think “King Phillip Can Only Find His Green Shoes” and you just nailed it! The classification for human beings adds another mnemonic; “Anthropology Can Make People Hate Helping (the) Sick” for “Anamalia, Cordata, Mamalis, Primate, Hominidae, Homo Sapiens.”

Acronyms that Became Common Words

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SCUBA, Although now considered to be a word of its own right, the acronym “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus” is what this acronym originally stood for. The idea of an atmospheric rebreather was conceived by Alexander Lodygin but it was the open-circuit units developed jointly by Emile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau that brought this device to teh familiar commercial success. “S.C.U.B.A.” was the term that the military gave to this device when it was being used by U.S. combat frogmen for underwater warfare during the Second World War. It takes government oversight on a project or product to produce a suitably complicated name, eh?

LASER is another acronym that became a word of its own standing. Originally the acronym “L.A.S.E.R.” meant “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” –This one definitely sounds like a government project to me.