three-letter

• “While smartphones have made life easier for some, psychologists say the love of them is becoming more like an addiction, creating consequences that range from minor (teenagers who communicate in three-letter acronyms like LOL and BRB) to major (car accidents caused by people who text while driving).”

  USA Today: Smartphone dependency: a growing obsession with gadgets

• “Prior to the BBC I worked for different three-letter abbreviations, the FPB and before that the MEN.”

  The Guardian: MediaCity on Monday: 'Finally the focus can again be on just doing the job'

• “I wanted something that was a three-letter word, something you couldn't look up in the dictionary.”

  The Huffington Post: Meredith Barnett: Meet the Man Behind Gwyneth's Lovely Locks

• “Guantánamo was attractive to administration officials because they believed it placed the detainees outside the reach of American laws, such as the right to appeal their imprisonment, yet it was only ninety miles off the coast of Florida, so it was accessible to the various three-letter agencies that would need to travel there to extract information from what was believed to be a population of hundreds of dangerous terrorists.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Longest War

• “Names of months are given standard three-letter abbreviations in the Notes.”

  Simon & Schuster: George Washington’s First War

• “With many three-letter symbols used up, they're focusing on four-letter ones—and considering words only elliptically related to the actual fund.”

  The Wall Street Journal: As ETFs Multiply, Companies Scramble To Concoct Memorable Ticker Symbols

• “A lifelong Tory, she grew disenchanted with the Major government following its series of three-letter disasters –ERM, BSE and BTB Back to Basics – and in 1996 she joined the Labour party, a decision she later dismissed as "a few months of madness".”

  The Guardian: Louise Mensch: Chick-lit queen who shines at Westminster | Profile

• “Likewise, there was once a good living to be made by people like me explaining genetics at the molecular level: all about hydrogen bonds, four-letter alphabets, three-letter code-words and A's, C's, G's and T's.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Microchips Are Old Hat. Can Tweets Be Far Behind?

• “The genetic code is a set of three-letter combinations of nucleotides called codons, each of which corresponds to a specific amino acid or stop signal.”

  Are Stereochemical Explanations Causally Sufficient?

• “Yet," defensive tackle Chris Canty said, forcefully adding the three-letter word to the aforementioned suggestion.”

  The Wall Street Journal: A Maddening Manning

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