New word of the month
by Kerry Maxwell

RIF noun [C] /rf/
reduction in force: a situation in which an employer ends a worker's employment, especially for financial reasons
RIF verb [T] (usually passive) /rf/
RIFed adjective /rft/

'To be clear, the agency has NOT yet decided whether involuntary layoffs of NASA's civil servant workforce (otherwise known as RIFs) will be needed in the future …'
(NASA Langley Research Center internal memo, 17th June 2005)

'… federal agencies, under orders to eliminate jobs and cut supervisory layers, paid nearly 200,000 feds $25,000 each to take regular or early retirement. Another 30,000 were RIFed to meet new lower job targets.'
(Washington Examiner, 22nd May 2005)

'RIFed employees may still be eligible for unemployment compensation …'
(Bankers Online, 22nd September 2003)

In the 19th century you were sacked or laid off, in the 20th century you were made redundant, and in the 21st century you are now RIFed.

Like its predecessors, RIF is a euphemism for the concept of having an employment terminated, usually because of the financial concerns of an employer. RIF is an abbreviation for reduction in force, with force referring of course to workforce. As well as occurring as a countable noun, RIF crops up productively in a range of related expressions, such as a RIF notice/letter (a letter telling employees about the proposed termination of their employment) or a RIF list (a list of workers who are likely to have their employment terminated). Companies who make it a priority to avoid redundancies can be said to have a no-RIF policy. RIF is used as a transitive verb, generally in the passive form as in, e.g.: 365 workers were RIFed …, and also occurs as a participle adjective as in, e.g.: RIFed employees.

RIF is sometimes also used as a generic term for reducing the size of a workforce by a variety of methods, and as well as lay-offs might include instances of voluntary resignation or retirement. If the method of reduction consists exclusively of lay-offs, a related abbreviation IRIF (involuntary reduction in force) is sometimes used. If on the other hand employees have played a part in the decision, usually through resignation or retirement, the abbreviation VRIF (voluntary reduction in force) often occurs.

Over many decades the English language has found ways of avoiding an explicit description of job loss. In the 1940s people were let go, with the underlying suggestion that this was ultimately for the good of the employee. In the 1980s we talked about downsizing, diverting attention away from individuals and focussing more on the global perspectives of a company. In the noughties, the expression RIF reflects the same euphemistic trend in yet a different guise. This time, an abbreviation is used as a mechanism for sanitising grim reality and avoiding all the negative connotations of job loss.

Abbreviations find their way into general use in English for a variety of reasons, euphemistic ones among them. By far the most common reason however is simple economy, compacting otherwise cumbersome expressions into more manageable strings of letters. In the 21st century, the widespread use of e-mail, text messaging and Internet-based communication has further consolidated this process, with a demand for written communication which takes place as speedily as possible. For instance, as well as a whole new vocabulary of text messaging abbreviations such as LOL (lots of love), TTFN ('ta ta' for now) and BTW (by the way) are now generally understood in all electronic communications.

Internet-based commerce is another area where the use of new abbreviations has rapidly taken off. Among the most commonly used ones are:

B2B business-to-business: describing transactions in which one company sells a product or service directly to another company

B2C business-to-consumer: describing transactions in which a company sells a product or service directly to a consumer

B2B2C business-to-business-to-consumer: describing transactions in which a business sells products or services to a consumer through another business as an intermediary

C2B2C consumer-to-business-to-consumer: describing transactions in which a consumer sells products or services to another consumer using a business as an intermediary

C2C consumer-to-consumer: describing transactions in which a consumer sells products directly to another consumer

Abbreviations which condense cumbersome phrases and at the same time roll off the tongue as a plausible sequence of English phonemes will often gain currency more quickly than those which involve the pronunciation of individual letters. This is the point at which an abbreviation becomes an acronym: an abbreviation whose letters form a new word which is generally understood in its own right, often without the user knowing the exact form of the original expression it abbreviates. Examples from the last 3 or 4 years include:

ASBO, pronounced /zb/, and short for Anti-Social Behaviour Order. An ASBO is a civil order intended to protect the community from a named individual with a tendency towards violent or disruptive behaviour. ASBO occurs as a countable noun and is frequently decapitalised to Asbo.

SARS, pronounced /sz/, and short for severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS was a new buzzword in English in 2003 amid worldwide concern about the spread of a highly contagious disease with pneumonia-like symptoms. Again, the decapitalised form Sars quickly entered widespread use.

BOGOF, pronounced /bgf/, and short for buy one get one free. A BOGOF is a sales promotion in which a customer receives a free product if a product of the same type is purchased. BOGOF is used as both a countable and uncountable noun, and quickly gained currency in the early noughties, partly because of its catchy similarity to an impolite phrase telling someone to "go away"! It is now frequently decapitalised completely to bogof, and is also used as an adjective as in, e.g.: bogof promotion/offer.

BAM, pronounced /bm/, and short for bricks and mortar. A BAM is a company which exists only as an actual business in the real, as opposed to the virtual, world, thus drawing a comparison with Internet-based companies. The expression also forms the basis of the term dotbam, which refers to the online version of a high-street retailer.

ICE, pronounced /as/, and short for in case of emergency. ICE emerged in the aftermath of the London terrorist attacks of July 2005, as a recommended way of quickly identifying emergency telephone numbers on a person's mobile phone should they be involved in an accident. Numbers of relatives or friends to be contacted in case of an emergency could be stored under the heading ICE, thus enabling emergency services to quickly contact those who could identify a victim or give vital information about a medical condition.

Like all new words, a major influence in the use of new abbreviations is popular culture and the preoccupations of society at a specific time. In the noughties, for example, society continually needs to distinguish between interaction in the real, as opposed to the virtual world. This gives us for example two new abbreviations, F2F, which means face to face (i.e.: actually seeing someone as opposed to communicating online or by mobile phone) and IRL, similarly standing for in real life.

Abbreviations often catch on more quickly if they are modelled on existing ones. For instance, based on the established abbreviation DWI (driving-while-impaired), DWY has recently been adopted in the US to abbreviate driving while yakking, or, in other words, the illegal activity of driving while speaking on a mobile phone. Over in Britain the abbreviation PGST, modelled on BST (British Summer Time) stands for permanent global summer time, and relates to the current tendency of supermarket companies to carefully source produce throughout the world, thus enabling the range of fruit and vegetables on their shelves to remain the same all year round.

Abbreviated forms are sometimes based exclusively on significant numbers rather than words. For instance, 24/7 has for some time been used as an informal abbreviation for the phrase all the time (based of course on the number of hours in a day and the number of days in a week). In recent years the abbreviation 9/11, referring to the terrorist attacks on New York's Twin Towers on September 11th 2001, has now become a universally understood representation of those tragic events. In 2005 it formed the model for the term 7/7, used to refer to the terrorist bombings in central London on the 7th July 2005.

Abbreviations based on combinations of letters and numbers are becoming increasingly common, as illustrated by the examples from Internet commerce shown above, where the number 2 is used to represent the word to. In electronic communication, especially text messaging, 2 is used to represent to, too and to- as a prefix, e.g.: 2day (today). Similarly 4 is used to represent for and -fore, e.g. B4 (before), and 8 is used to represent '-eat' or '-ate', e.g.: GR8 (great), L8R (later).

A recent alphanumerical abbreviation from the world of sport is SW19, used as a way of referring to the famous Wimbledon tennis club, and based on the UK postcode for the Wimbledon area of Greater London, with SW standing for South West.

For more information about new and topical words and phrases, read Kerry's Word of the Week articles on the MED Resource Site.