Acronyms Home

Acronyms, abbreviations and lingo used at MIT

This wiki aims to help community members decipher the "alphabet soup" of acronyms and other mysterious terms used at the Institute. It builds on a list created in the MIT Libraries in 1989 that morphed into a web site managed at various times by Janet Snover, Bill Litant and Catherine Avril. Old and even defunct acronyms and abbreviations are included here because some people still use them. Most of the items are MIT terms, but some external organizations that are referred to at MIT are also included.

There's also a page with MIT lingo. You can navigate using the "trail" inside the dark bar at the very top of this page, or by clicking on Browse Space and then Pages in the navigation bar at left.

To make this list truly useful and up to date, we need your help! If you're a member of the MIT community with MIT web certificates, you can make changes or additions to almost anything in this wiki. This includes making new entries and adding links to current entries. Just go to the page where you want to add or change an entry, log in at the top of the page, and hit Edit.

• To edit an existing entry: Find the item you want to edit, type your change and hit Save.
• To add a link to an existing entry: Highlight the entry, then click the Link button in the toolbar along the top. Type the link in the popup window and hit Okay. Then hit Save.
• To create a new entry: Go to the spot in the page where the new entry should appear. Click the Wiki Markup tab above the formatting toolbar, then cut and paste an adjacent entry and rewrite the duplicate into your new entry. Then hit Save.

NOTE: To prevent errors or abuse, the wiki keeps a record of each change along with the time it was made and who made it. If you have any questions or problems, please contact Alice Waugh (awaugh "at" mit "dot" edu).

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MIT lingo