#778 Occasional Redundancy

Abbreviations occasionally lead to weird redundancies and misusages.
A new abbreviation out is R.O.I. It means return on investment. How much you’re liable to get out of something compared to what you put into it. It was originally a business term. But now people use it in everyday language.
Especially with gas prices so high. A 5-mile trip to Dairy Queen for a blizzard may cost a couple of bucks in gas. So is the pleasure of the blizzard a good ROI?
Unfortunately, like the acronyms VIN and PIN, American language users don’t like to leave things hanging with a made-up word or initial. Which leads to the redundancies of “VIN number” and “PIN number.” So it is that the other day I heard a guy at a speech say “it was a good ROI on investment.”
Yeah.
Saying, “I couldn’t get any money out after I went to all the effort of putting my PIN number into the ATM machine so I guess had a poor ROI on investment” sounds okay.
But actually, it translates into “I couldn’t get any money out after I went to all the effort of putting my personal identification number number into the automated teller machine machine so I had a poor return on investment on investment.
I think I’m having a heart attack. Somebody give me CPR resuscitation.
Likewise my old favorite RSVP. I heard someone the other day backing out of a commitment to go somewhere. She should have simply said she wouldn’t be able to attend. Instead she said she would have to withdraw her RSVP.
That’s what comes of initializing French I guess. RSVP stands for Repondez S’il Vous Plait, which means respond if you please, or more Americanly, please respond. So, of course RSVP please is the redundancy, respond if you please please. And withdrawing your RSVP is withdrawing your respond-if-you-please.
Nonetheless, our facilities of understanding are plenty flexible so we all know what she meant.
And that wonderful capacity of humanity is why people tell cramp-brained little nitpickers like me to mind our own wax of the B’s. America, ya gotta love it.