Hacker News Reader

Comment by wincy | Hacker News Reader

I swear the acronym BOGO appeared ex nihilo three years ago. I’d literally never seen it before then and was very confused about what it meant, and still am convinced it’s an acronym that a marketing firm invented to sound hip. (buy one get one for anyone out of the loop)

View on HN

First time I see it. Had it been used in a HN comment, I would have ranted about people inventing acronyms on the spot and expecting everybody to know them. I live in England and I've never seen it before.

English is the lingua franca of the Internet, but this example shows that some acronyms are not as global as people might think. I guess BOGO (buy one get one) might be commonplace if you shop in an American store, but anybody else that doesn't live there might not have had exposure to it before, and get quite annoyed. Same with stuff like GOP (Grand Old Party) or even DUI (Driving Under the Influence). Americans on the Internet just love to drop their three-letter acronyms on an international forum.

Acronyms are context and location sensitive. One should refrain to use them on the Internet unless you can expect anyone who's reading you to know then (i.e. FBI, WHO, UN)

Here in Tampa, so close to the birthplace of Publix Supermarkets, we are born knowing to seek out BOGOs.

BOGO as a shopping term has been around as long as I can remember.

Merriam-Webster is reporting that the first attested usage of BOGO was from 1983, but I had never encountered the term until last night when my wife used it in conversation! It confused me so much she had to finally say "buy one..."

Then I got to explain bogo as a prefix in computing and chess before picking nits like "shouldn't it be BOGOF" (typical HN commentor that I am)?

BOGOF was definitely enough of an established term here for ads that were making fun of the term in a meta sense while sharing their offers to have existed in the 90s.

I've never seen it as just BOGO though.

>I swear the acronym BOGO appeared ex nihilo three years ago.

No, that just happened a moment ago. :)

I am familiar with the concept; just not familiar with it as an acronym.

BOPIS went from the back-office (is that even a word anymore?) to consumer marketing during the pandemic, too..

What's BOPIS?

Buy Online, Pick up In Store.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com