I came across the abbreviation MEXT, which stands for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. You expect the abbreviation to be MECSST. Someone was ingenious, thought MECSST was boring, and suggested MEXT – the way MECSST will be pronounced as a word. That is something cool.

And someone is inspired by the quotation – “To be or not to be”. An engineering college in Chennai (I try to recollect the name, but my memory fails me) has as its motto: “To B.E. or not to B.E.” This coinage is one of the few instances where an abbreviation is “verbed” (and this is the only instance I could remember).

Sometimes abbreviations are amusing.