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GIF Becomes Word of the Year 2012

Posted by samzenpus on from the in-other-arbitrary-news dept.

mikejuk writes "GIF started out as a humble acronym 25 years ago, entered common parlance as the format used for web graphics and now achieves fame as a verb by becoming Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year 2012. GIF as a noun has always been an all-capital letter noun. Becoming a verb has caused problems concerning the use of capital and lower case letters. The common form is to keep the noun in caps and add the verbal endings in lower case — as in GIFed,GIFing), However, an all lower-case spelling with the f duplicated (giffed, giffing) is also being used."

4 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:But how does it sound? by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative
    I came to say the exact same thing, but I clicked through the maze of links first, and found:

    Pronunciation: /jif, gif/

    The OED describes, not prescribes.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  2. Re:But how does it sound? by Ed_Pinkley · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the thing: If you invent something, you get to name it.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format#Pronunciation
    " According to Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF format, the original pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand, Jif, "

    --
    "Long time listener, first time caller."
  3. Re:But how does it sound? by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Informative

    PNG is good if you dont mind blocky distortion around your line art too!

    Huh? PNG supports 24 and 32-bit colour- more than enough for anti-aliasing- and 8-bit transparency so you're either assuming that the limitations of GIF are those of PNG, or you're using an old browser that doesn't handle transparent PNGs correctly and messes up the background.

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  4. Re:And also... by pclminion · · Score: 4, Informative

    GIF is an acronym for Graphic Interchange Format, not for Giraffe interchange format. So the G in GIF is hard, just like the G in Graphic.

    Laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, not Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation. Therefore the 's' in laser is unvoiced and should be pronounced "lay-sir" not "lay-zer."

    Actually, no, that's still not right. The A in Amplification is a short A not a long one, so the word should be pronounced "lah-sir." But wait, the E in emission is long, so it should actually be "lah-seer."

    Or we could admit that that's not how acronym pronunciation works and stop being dumbshits.