Pow means 'prisoner of war'.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I keep seeing the Princess of Wales referred to as the 'PoW'. It's annoying me so I thought I'd come here and see if anyone else is annoyed.

I had a little look and it's about 1/2 and 1/2. "Indifference to PoW" and the one about PoW leaving a poster in tears are very likely to be misinterpreted (and were by me).

I have no desire to click on royal nonsense. Unless it's to tell off the stalkers who seem to plague them, and the sycophants who lick their boots.

And we should all hope and pray people learn to put context in their titles but we shouldn't hold our collective breath.

I guess this comes back to my usual rule - there's a place for pedantry and precision, but MN doesn't need to be it. MNers are posting quickly while carrying on with real life, and clicking on a thread titled PoW only to find it has a different meaning than expected will only cost seconds.

It only costs seconds if you don't end up getting sucked in, open mouthed, to the batshit insanity, full of sycophantic obsequiousness or tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

It's a bit like poking at a sore tooth. You know you shouldn't, you know it's not good for you, but you just can't resist whereas if my rule was in place, the title would be enough to keep me out. Well, unless it's sufficiently batshit to pull me in unwillingly.

PoW and PoWess have been used in this way since at least the publication of the Sloane Rangers' Handbook - and probably before that too.

I hate to say this, but that was 1982 - 42 years ago (which is a bit of a shock to the system, if you tend to think the 80s were only yesterday).

So I think railing against a decades-long usage is a highway to nowhere

I’m sure the rest of the post makes it clear whether the person is talking about Kate or prisoners of war. It takes a few seconds to work it out and click out of a post you’re not interested in. If you’re on mumsnet you’re hardly busy so can spare a few seconds.

There have also been posters trying to tell others off for calling her Kate/Kate Middleton. It’s a forum, people will refer to her in a way they want to. It doesn’t really matter on a forum. Learn not to care because you’re unlikely to get people to change.

Thanks, captain obvious.

It is still totally valid to be slightly annoyed about it and express it in Pedant's corner.

Of course, just like it’s still valid to say what I have. It’s a public forum. 😊

Sure. You can bring as many owls to Athens as you wish.

My point is that by posting in Pedants' corner posters pro-actively acknowledge that majority doesn't care and will keep doing it. It's just nice to see that someone else is mildly annoyed about it as well.

Quite @ZiriForGood, I chose my audience. I wouldn't set foot in Royal Family and object there. I've kayaked with crocodiles but I'm not that brave.

I am increasingly associating POW with Party Of Women. the new political party.

Just to complicate things further.

Ah. thank you.

I know there's now a 'Thanks' button at the bottom line of a post but I wish that there was also a 'laughing' one, which just counted the number of people who laughed at a post and only revealed the number to the poster.

I've been catching up on here and there were several posts that have given me a smile. Cheers.

Speaking as a pedant, I don't usually mind using PoW for Prince of Wales, because it's the name of a popular local pub, and I'm used to seeing it abbreviated as such, but I think it's madness to use it online as an abbreviation for Princess of Wales at the moment in a context where you're inevitably going to be talking about both him and her.

Looking at all the responses on this thread made me think "WTF!!!"

By which I mean the World Taekwondo Federation, of course, which changed its name to World Taekwondo in 2017. Presumably bowing out with good grace in the face of the relatively new meaning for its initials.

I really don't understand why this thread is in Pedants' Corner. It is annoying, of course, to have what turn out to be the wrong expectations about how a set of letters is being used. But it is no sense an error to coin them at will. There is no rule book or official dictionary, as with grammar and spelling, and so new usages emerge even more freely and frequently than they do with grammar and spelling.

(Of course there are IP rules which may restrict the use of certain acronyms protected by trademark, etc. But that isn't the issue here.)

But this is Pedants’ corner. This is where it absolutely ^is* worth getting worked up about things like this! Talking of which,

TIA can mean transient ischaemic attack or thanks in advance.

I’ve always thought it stood for ‘thanks in anticipation’?

Ironically, pedants' corner is a safe space for people wanting to make tiny gripes about language usages which aren't actually wrong but annoy you anyway.

Anyone who’s done notes training in the NHS will have been give loads of these as examples of why you shouldn’t use abbreviations.
PD - personality disorder or Parkinson’s disease
ED - eating disorder or erectile dysfunction
DOA - date of arrival or dead on arrival

Lol 😂I went there.

Yeah, the NHS is a demon for its abbreviations, even in communication with patients rather than within its own bureaucracy. In my local hospital the sign for the outpatients' dept has been replaced with one that just says OPD. Very helpful.
And some signs have the abbreviations tacked on. E.g. (this is a made-up example because I can't remember the ones I have seen) "Acute Medical Ward (AMW)."
My local council is another offender. It is addicted to calling its recycling centres HWRC (ie household waste recycling centres) in communications with members of the public. It is almost like they want to heighten their own mystique by communicating opaquely. The same ambition as every mediocre French philosopher.

@GoodOldEmmaNess @ThePerfectDog
I remember back when Twitter and hashtags were new and cool, back when people like Paris Hilton used to literally say stuff like “# BFFs!”, we had a new house officer who wondered why we kept writing “hashtag NOF”, “hashtag humerus” etc in the paper notes. “You can’t search by hashtag in paper notes, so why are we tagging our entries?”

Once we stopped laughing, we had to explain # means fracture. So fractured neck of femur, as a diagnosis.

I love the idea of optimistically tagging your written notes in the hopes somebody can search it later, or even better (and what he obviously thought) some uncool oldster SpR (early 30s) not understanding how hashtags work, and trying to be down with the kids by writing #orthowardround, #dischargeplanning 🤣

I love that # means fracture. It is a bit baffling though.
I hope they use a semi-colon for ruptured intestines.

😂

Could a semi-colon also be a dislocation though?

) = pregnant or obese.
( = fasting or malnourished
& = twisted intestine or confused

@OchonAgusOchonOh 😂😁

It confused me when I first saw it! I read it as prisoner of war too.

I have a friend who thought LOL meant lots of love and there was a very unfortunate text exchange before it came to light.