More Acronyms: OP and SPA, plus County Codes and Phone Codes

 Episode 114 of I Hate Talking explores the acronym “OP” and how its meaning shifts depending on context. The hosts contrast the Reddit usage of OP as “original poster” with the gaming-world meaning of “overpowered,” then widen the discussion to other interpretations like “op ed,” “opportunity,” and more.

They note just how many definitions the acronym has, using it as a springboard into a broader conversation about how shorthand evolves across online communities, workplaces, and even country codes. The episode also touches on related topics like gaming language, texting shortcuts, and why some acronyms become so common they feel like ordinary words. It closes with the familiar reminder that conversation helps turn confusion into understanding.

Keywords: OP meaning, original poster, overpowered, Reddit OP, gaming slang, acronym meanings, internet acronyms, text abbreviations, op ed meaning, acronym Finder, shorthand language, online slang, OP definitions, conversational podcast.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:30

Welcome to episode 114 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So, in this particular episode, we will be discussing the word or phrase, or in this case, I suppose, an acronym. Oh wow, OK, another acronym. OP OK. This is the word I hear so often in my life right now. It's true, and the kids use it in a way that I typically do not use it. Oh, really? How do you use it? So the way that I would use the word OP would be original poster in the Reddit world. OK. Referring back to the content creator of the main article. In Reddit. So like, In the Reddit, what is this thing or something, a OP might post about something that they cannot identify and share the picture with the internet world, and people try to identify it and they would refer to the person that posted that original question as OP. OK, right. Yes, I've seen that before. So original poster. Yes, but the kids use it in a different way. So share overpowered. I've had to ask them before cause they'll be like, that's so OK. And I have thought that before, like you said, like my thought went to Reddit with original poster kind of thing, and I was confused. They've told me no, that means overpowered. So just like a lot of power or really good. Yes, and that's probably coming mainly from the gaming world that different weapons or things that enhance their characters' abilities are OP. It can also mean a whole bunch of different things. So according to acronym Finder.com, Based on rank Opportunity. OP for opportunity is shortened. OK. Used mainly within the advertising world. So. An ad might yield different OP opportunity in terms of how many people click through or buy their product. Opinion. Same idea, OK. Which would be probably more frequently used in the phrase op ed. Opinion editorial, right? Isn't that what that means? I have no idea. I believe it. I've heard, I've heard that phrase before. I didn't know it. I never thought about what it meant. I guess I better check because I think it means opinion editorial. OK. Well, Merriam-Webster's simply defines op ed as a page of special features usually opposite the editorial page of a newspaper. Interesting. OK, so the opposite of what the newspaper wants you to believe. Yes, apparently It is the page opposite of the editorial page. I mean, it's similar, you thought it meant opinion of it. Right. So, I mean, it stands similar category, right? Opposite of it or opinion of it. Interesting. So there you go. No, it doesn't really have. Anything to do with opinion, it is simply the placement. In the newspaper and that was from Apparently 1931. OK, back when newspapers were popular. No, opposite, opposite, not opinion. So op ed means opposite of. OK. Output OK. And what's that category for? Like outputs, inputs, probably more within the vein of like designs or Circuitry or things like that. OK. It can mean simply opposite, so there you go, operator. Probably used within more military context. OK, optical. Opera OK. Original poster. So there you go. Original poster is is above overpowered. Yes. One piece referring to the anime series. Other people, Ocean Pacific. Opus as it relates to the music work. Mr. Holland's opus, yep, and then overpowered. So we finally made it overpowered amount of times this season in our house, that would be number 1 though. The list goes on, and these are ranked by number of stars 1 through 4, and we're still on the 5-st meetings. So there's actually quite a bit of 5-star meetings. There's a French over professional, which means professional worker, Order of precedence, Overland Park located in Kansas. Old patient oral presentation. Outpatient Order of the Pelican. Oxidative phosphorylation. Optical power, referring to like the power of a telescope or binoculars or something. Osteoporosis, off-peak operating procedures. Some Finnish word that I cannot pronounce that refers to some sort of programming site. Opening post in regards to internet message boards, order processing outreach program, Olympic Peninsula, located in Washington state. Office of Policy in the Social Security Department. Optimus Prime from the Autobots of the Transformers. Operating pressure, old Persian. And operator panel operator panel. Those are all the 5-star listings and then it goes on to 4s and 3s and beyond. So we'll save all our listeners the time of reading that list, but that's on acronym Finder.com for OP if you wanna go look at it. Holy moly, that's so much. So is it, I mean, it's legitimately. It's just based on what context and group you're talking to then. I suppose so. It says that there's 115 definitions for OP. On acronym Finder.com. Do you wanna know a way you can make our kids mad? I don't know, you could call them UP, I guess. Well, maybe I was saying, thinking that when you, they say OP because they say it so often. You could yell out like Optimus Prime or something like that. They will not find that funny. That's true. They might not even know who Optimus Prime is. They know the Transformers, but I don't know if they know the character Optimus Prime is like the main character in the Transformers. They probably don't know one piece either. You don't probably don't even know one piece. -- Is that a -- band? Oh, the anime series? -- Oh -- no, I thought it was a band because that one is above. Original poster and overpowered. Have you seen that show before? One Piece, no, I'm aware of it, but I don't think I've particularly watched it. Ghost in the Shell is my particular anime series that I would watch. Oh, that's a good one. I guess we have a new show to watch then. I think I've tried to make you watch it one time and it, it didn't work. So That is our word or phrase of the episode, OP. And specifically thinking of how our kids use it in reference to video games and the different buffs or weapons that they may have within said video games as being overpowered. But Also referring to it as perhaps both of ours more common usage in reference to original poster in Reddit. And different website. Things of that nature. Message boards, indeed. Yeah, so I guess it definitely depends on the context, the way our kids use it. Saying overpowered, would you consider that a positive thing or negative? I think it's typically used in more of a negative connotation where it's like sort of a diss on a person that they are winning the video game just because they are using an OP. Thing within the video game. Like they didn't earn it, they cheated. Or you can use the very last two star definition for OP ordinance publication. Ordinance like city ordinance, city ordinance publication. OK, well, I guess the city programmer probably uses that a lot. They might. Mm. They may indeed Acronyms are crazy cause you could just make anything an acronym, right? Yeah, like scuba or laser or taser, radar. So, uh, do you want me to show my hand or do you want to keep? A mystery alive. Well, I guess in blackjack, you show your hand now in. The games of chance. Yeah, we've been playing blackjack we've been. As all good parents do, right? Teaching your elementary kids how to. Use poker chips and play. That's what we've been doing at nights nowadays. That's true. I mean, it does help with their math skills. Yeah, I mean, our six year old's good when we play blackjack. He's having to count to 21 and figure it out, and he's doing good. Doing well. But that's not what you're referring to when you're talking about showing your hand. No, when we were dating, we weren't even married yet. There was an acronym, I won't say what it is, about your job, and I didn't know how to spell. Your job thing, so I just. Use an acronym myself to shorten it. And I remember you being so impressed. You were like, whoa, how did you know to use that? I was like, uh, in my head it was cause I didn't know how to spell it. Indeed I do remember that happening, happening. Yes, but I did you know that's why I did it? No, -- I did not know that's why -- you did that. Why did, why did you have to, because you couldn't. Text it, you can spell it in a text format is what you're saying. I see. I see. And I didn't know how to spell it, so I just did the initials. -- And you were so -- impressed. There you go. I remember that instance, and I do remember being impressed. So there you go. Are you less impressed now that you know, or are you more impressed that I kept it a secret for 18 years? I guess that's. So, since OP had so many different definitions for the acronym, I was curious if there is a particular acronym that has the most definitions. And according to Encyclopedia Brit Britannica and Wikipedia, That the acronym SA SPA is the most definitions for a particular acronym with 239 definitions according to acronym Finder.com. Holy moly, OK, don't tell me yet. Let me see if I can figure any out. The only one that's coming to my mind is a spa, like you go get massages. Right, that's just a word, not an acronym. OK, so spa, sensor cent I was gonna say central, but that's not it, um, seasons processing association. I, I can't even think of a single one. So it's not specifically an acronym, it's more of a shortening of a word. There's a lot of stuff with SPA referring to Spanish or Spain, and that's why it has so many. There's also a lot of acronyms that have to do with the word special and then whatever the PA is there can also be a lot of school and then whatever the PA is like school of Performing Arts. There's a lot associated with sales. That Have that as well as student. Or senior, that's what I'm about to say that that's why I came up with like senior production and analyst or something like that, senior program assistant, student progress and achievement as examples. There's a lot of Student and senior -- ones in here as well as -- special. So SPA is the most common initials. The acronym with the most different definitions, yes, according to these sources. So you would know it. I mean, I guess there's acronyms that I use at work that are just so commonly used that they're basically words and I may not even know what they mean. I mean, I know conceptually what they mean, but I don't know necessarily what they stand for. I know them though? These are because you're in your field. No, these are like not even field-specific acronyms, -- but like company-specific -- acronyms. So, SPA. There's a lot. Spa. But most people don't call acronyms by the sound, right? You call it SPA. Yes, SPA. Or you just, in some of these I don't think are true acronyms like Spain. Or like the team shortenings of the three-letter code for the World Cup and things like that. Sometimes you might say them as like the word, but I think most times you would say the entire country name. Like Germany or Spain. I mean, I guess like. You might say, What's CVG? Which one was that? I have no idea. They just played today, I think. Central, I don't know. I don't wanna offend anyone. Look it up. Maybe it's not CBD. -- What -- is they play Uruguay. Yeah, Uruguay, it wasn't CBG. Cabo Verde Is who played Uruguay. Cabo? That's what my thing says. It says -- Cape -- Verde. This is Cabo in Fox Sports One it says. Interesting. I did see people wearing Cabo shirts. See. PD. Well then Cabo, yeah, Cabo wouldn't be a P, it would be Cape, Cape Verde. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, bud. This is what my phone says. CPV though, right? CPV as Cabo Verde. Cabo verde. is a country in Africa. Officially, the Republic of Cabo Verde. It's in central Atlantic Ocean, 500 kilometers off of West Africa. It's got 10 volcanic islands. There you go. Anyway, my point being that when you see the word SPA as referring to The team of Spain in the World Cup, you're not going to say spa or SBA, you're going to say Spain, right? Well, it's like. Us, right, our country. It says USA we don't call it us. Asa use, it's USA. Yeah, but you might call Cape Verde CVP. Yeah, like USA. Right. You say that you don't. Say use. So if it's a shortening, you say the entire word. If it's a true or semi-true acronym, you would pronounce the letters. Is that the rule that we're landing on? I don't think so. What's the Ivory Coast? That's the other one that I'm thinking of. CIV, see, maybe that's why I was getting confused. So that's the coast of ivory, I suppose. CIV. So would you say CIV or would you say Ivory Coast, or would you say SIV? Yeah, I wouldn't say SIV. I would say either CIV. I'd probably look it up, because I unfortunately don't know what it stood for. And then I'd call it Ivory Coast. There you go. But that one's sort of in line with being an acronym, similar to Keeper. Do you only call it USA because you live there and that's sort of. Familiar term to you? Other people would just say United States of America. Maybe, I think people call it the states. In my experience, right? What about you? Dealing with the people from other countries, I feel like people most commonly call it the states. Mm Yeah, states, I guess. America, I don't, I'm not very frequently heard it referred to as the United States of America, all, all in one. It's one of the more shortened things, US, America, states. Yep, indeed. Now, if we're talking about acronyms, there's the United Kingdom, I think we usually call it the UK. Yeah, that's true, but you don't call it. Uh No, you know what I mean? It's the UK, the United Kingdom. That's true. Interesting. So, a bit of a rabbit trail down into the Acronyms of or shortening formed of country codes as it relates to the World Cup all because of SPA because of the most. Widely used acronym for a variety of different things. So you go by your. First, middle, and last name, fairly often. I do. And when we write it out, we often go by our children's also. But we have our youngest shares your middle name, and then obviously shares your last name too. Hm. So does that make it complicated that y'all have the same middle and last name? No, I don't think so. I've never run into any instances where that was a difficulty. -- But are you glad that he doesn't share the first initial -- of your? Yes, that's true. I would, I suppose that would have been a Reason for not naming him the same. First initial, like that would have precluded all names that started with my same letter. We Had a name that we were gonna name him. But by the time we got to his name, we knew his middle name would be yours because all of our children's middle names are grandparents' middle names. And because we lost our 4th child, we weren't gonna reuse that middle name. So essentially, what is our 4th child now, but was, is truly our 5th child. We had to come up with another middle name. We discussed using our parents, but then that gets tricky, right? Cause which parent do you choose or do you keep having kids to use all of the parents. So we opted for your middle name instead. Yep. And because of his acronym, we could not use our ideal first name. That's true. We started saying like this is gonna be his name and then you noticed it fairly quickly. But you were like, oh, can't do that because it ended up being a bad word, right? Yep. The other thing that we did. Not necessarily on purpose in the beginning, but on purpose towards the end, since we do have 4 kids, is that they're all in alphabetic order. It does make it really nice for like legal forms and things that they're just in order all the same time, uh, because it will either be sorted by age or it will be sorted by name. And even if it's sorted by last name, then first name or exclusively by first name, it is all in the same order all the time, right? Yeah, yeah, in the beginning that was not intentional. It happened. But yeah, I guess it's not a spoiler if we say it, but obviously we have all boys, no girls, but at our last pregnancy, you wanted, if it was a girl, you're really rooting for Zaria, which was always in the running for all of the names. I think Zaria is beautiful. I remember being like, no, it's a Z. You just want that cause once we hit Z, we're done. No, that wasn't My only reason, but only reason, -- but that was in there a little -- bit of a reason, but you didn't there's, there's names after. Zaria like a Ze or something like that. But, but then, no, I don't think so because then the initials would still be the same. So I think we would have had to abandon the -- alphabetical nature -- start back at the beginning -- or -- like name them Ampersand or something. Start using numbers or something. Well, numbers would come before letters, so that wouldn't work. I think you'd have to use a special character like an ampersand or a dash or a slash or something like that. Yeah, that would be good. You could just name them like slash. But it would be actually the slash. Icon as their name. I'm sure somebody has that out there, probably. I'm looking at the keyboard to see if there's any other ones that would be good. Slash is probably the best. Or dash dash would work, yep. Star star, but that's really the asterisk. Star is not a correct, no, it's probably used more within the cell phone era as being star, but 360, that's an asterisk. Why do I have that number in my head? I don't know what 360 is. Is that the, is that the um. Caller ID, uh, probably that's like what you. Dial the Call somebody back if it's an unknown number or something. And then pound sign, that's another one that has been co-opted because now it's a hashtag, but hashtag was not the original name of that particular icon. Star 360, is it a 60? Are you getting like wildcard results on search engines because of star being like a wildcard thing? It's coming up with things like, like 360 or some educational program. Star 60 is a code used on AT&T phones to activate call block. Is that what you're thinking of? I think so. So 60, -- you said -- 60, -- not -- 360, OK. I feel like that was something we used to have to do back in the day. He didn't want people to know who was calling. He'd hit 60. And that would block them, block you. So people didn't know that you were calling, right? I don't know. I never used any of these particular features, so I'm not sure. -- You never -- prank called anyone. No, I don't think I ever have, ever. Good for you. Sometimes when like, My parents would answer the phone and, or when I would answer the phone, we would pretend to be like a pizza shop or something. That was like the probably the closest thing to a prank call that I've ever done. You do that on my phone right now. People like all this. -- Oh -- yeah, we're spam callers. Yeah, you can just pretend to be an old woman or like a pizza shop or something. They don't call back after that. It worked for me. I've always do that with my spam callers and I get very, very few S spam calls now. I get, I need to get one of those apps that delete all my information off the web. Cause I fall for too many spam calls because I like to get discounts. So they're like, put your phone number and you get 30% off, and so I do it. And now everyone has my number and I get. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say at least 3 to 4 spam calls a day. That's true. So that is our word or phrase OP and a variety of different discussion on country codes and phone codes and other acronyms. So you can always like, share, subscribe, and if you share this episode with another person, hopefully they won't 6 to you. Uh whatever it works. I want to try calling you now and try it. I don't know, it probably, it looks like it still works. It looks like it has recent documentation on Various cell phone providers' websites, so I think it still does work. But if you use it, and then how do you undo it? This is a dangerous proposition that you've made here. Don't say my number online. Don't 60 me, then I won't ever be able to call you. You're gonna block me. No, it's just for now, right? I don't know how you undo it. I was just gonna call you right now to test it out. -- Don't -- do that. It's gonna block me and then it will never work again. Yeah, I don't think so. It's just right now. No, don't do this, OK? I won't do it. All right. Maybe one of our listeners is brave enough to test it with a real phone number, and you can let us know in a comment or text or email. Let us know what happens with the 360, not 360, 60. Why is it, why is it 360? I don't know. I wanna say 360, but it's. It's just, no, it's 60. There also is that phone number you'd call that was like a breakup number. I never use this. I had the time and temperature phone number memorized back when you had to call a number to find out what the weather was. Yeah, I was thinking about that recently, not about that, but about I took the kids to the movie theater. I was talking about how expensive it was last week. I took him to a movie, just like the summer dollar theater movie thing. And I was like, man, I used to have to like call this phone number and listen to everything. Like all their spiel to find out when the movie was. Life is so good now that I can just go online. Yeah, Seinfeld did an episode about that. That was like the funniest Seinfeld episode in my opinion, was when the guy did a movie. Call service Maybe you can show me sometime. I've never felt like Seinfeld was funny. I didn't either, but that was one of the funny ones in my opinion. Maybe we can watch. There you go. You can let us know your favorite Seinfeld episode and maybe we'll go watch One Piece and or Ghost in the Shell. Or attempt to. Attempt that's more like it. -- Or -- at least introduce our kids to Transformers so they know who Optimus Prime is. We need to do that. There you go. So, from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.