STARE
SMACK
SLANG
SWAIN
SNAFU (bloody ridiculous!) SNAFU is an acronym that is widely used to stand for the sarcastic expression Situation normal: all fucked up
I agree - it really is insane when you have 4 letters and a definite position and a number of non-positions and you are left with no words that you consider to be proper words...
no different than ... laser? scuba?
i even think SPAM is SPiced hAM, though talk about a stretch ..
i worked for the Army and Navy... quite often heard.
the less vulgar phrase is, "Situation normal, all fouled up".
I guess it's a word if it's in the dictionary. Acronyms do become words over time if enough people say them as full words rather than spelling them out for long enough... But the online Scrabble I played with my nephew for a while (Wordfeud maybe?) didn't recognize most of them as such. Then again the US version did, so I guess different countries just have different habits And maybe they try to keep us on our toes by using very different kinds of words.