• jerkface@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I find “LEGOs” very upsetting.

    Lego is not an acronym. It does not usually get all-caps in prose, though the all-caps logotype is sometimes imitated in text.

    Lego is a proper name, and is also used as a collective noun. It does not get pluralized.

    “You can’t play with Lego anymore.”

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      In my word, you put Lego Men in your Lego creations. No LEGOs, no minifigs [the Lego Men that are female are Lady Lego Men], and no sets.

      The whole ‘you make the rules’ aspect of the toy has been lost in a dozen licensing agreements.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      fuck that. Lego is a company and I don’t need it to tell me how I can and cannot use their name. if they don’t like it they can suck my dick.

      I really don’t understand why there are so many people passionate about how to “properly” use The Trademark™ in The Way that was Sanctioned by The Corporation®

      just play with your Legos and get over it

      • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        I assume the people are passionate about grammar, and their corrections have nothing to do with respecting trademarks.

      • Emerald@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        I really don’t understand why there are so many people passionate about how to “properly” use The Trademark™ in The Way that was Sanctioned by The Corporation®

        Actually, they are advocating against using it how the Lego company does. The Lego company uses LEGO in all caps.

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          I’m pretty sure the reason Lego isn’t supposed to be used is because they don’t want the trademark to be genericized. the all caps thing is stylization, I doubt they give a shit if you type it all caps or not.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        19 hours ago

        Brought to you by the folks behind “Get Off That Nintendo and Go Outside” while you were PC gaming. Lol :p

    • lime!@feddit.nu
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      1 day ago

      LEGO is too an acronym. it stands for Leg Godt, Danish for “play well”

          • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            It’s an abbreviation.

            Not all abbreviations are acronyms, only the ones that take the first letter from each word. Lego takes two letters from each word, so it’s not an acronym.

            On a similar note, some but not all acronyms are initialisms, if they’re spoken as the letters rather than the “word” they create.

            FYI, DIY, PS are all initialisms, and also acronyms, and also abbreviations. ASAP, SCUBA, and LASER are acronyms and abbreviations, but not initialisms. Lego, appt, and st are all abbreviations but neither acronyms nor initialisms.

            • pyre@lemmy.world
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              11 hours ago

              I always thought acronym is a subset of initialism, not the other way around.

            • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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              19 hours ago

              That’s a really good breakdown of the differences!

              Now if you’ll excuse me I have a few Ell-Ee-Gee-Oh sets to put together. :p

            • RustyEarthfire@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              I think the “correct” usage of acronym is only when it is spoken as a word. But language evolves and all that.

              You can see the tension in the way MW defines it (including the extended description). Like: here’s the definition of the word, but some people use it when they actually mean initialism. This is in contrast to your more concise and cohesive definition of “[abbreviations] that take the first letter from each word”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acronym

            • lime!@feddit.nu
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              23 hours ago

              why is english like this… we just call it “shortening”.

                • lime!@feddit.nu
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                  21 hours ago

                  in my language we tend to use base words to broadly describe concepts, and combinations of words for more accuracy.