So sick of this...
 

Someone posted on Facebook:

"Isn't EAT fraternity (sigma delta tau) the little smart fraternity thing? I see everyone wearing it."

"Sigma delta tau would be SDT wouldn't it?"

" when you actually have the greek letters it looks like EAT. our caf made shirts that had that on it and gave them out"

Are you joking me?

I know, ha ha, our letters "look like EAT", very funny and original. :rolleyes:

We try to counteract it by saying things like "Actually, they stand for SIGMA DELTA TAU, and the secret meaning behind them is very beautiful and special". Or we use it to our advantage, as in "EAT YOUR HEART OUT" or "GREATNESS"

But honestly, it gets so old. And the fact that I've been hearing about people making SDT letters to wear as a joke? Uh uh. It's not Epsilon Alpha Tau, for crying out loud.

Sorry, just had to rant about it...:p

Anyone else have similar letter misconceptions or ways of handling it?

Did you just initiate or something?

Also, GDIs make these jokes all the time. You get over it.

Ex-asshole boyfriend liked to call Sigma Kappa "eek"

I feel your pain.

And honestly you can correct people but usually it's half-sarcastic anyway. I don't feel an urge to "do" anything about it anymore. Not my fault they were too stupid to pay attention to what a Sigma looks like.

I got the obvious "EEE" or "SSS" a lot from non-Greeks. Not a huge deal.I found it more funny than anything.

ADP seems to be some sort of chemical abbreviation. It does bug me.

See we don't have that problem because both of our letters are obviously greek lol. Though I do sometimes see people write it in English as YU and I can't figure out why for the life of me.

I get jokes about "KKK" sometimes. People just think they're being clever when they have NO idea what Greek letters even are much less what their significance is.

I never know what to say when someone looks at my AKA t-shirt and yells, "Also-known-as WHAT?" :rolleyes:

Sigma Chi always gets, "Why does your shirt say 'ex'?"

I can't say I've run into the problem for us. Phi seems to be one of the few distinctively Greek letters lots of people recognize, and the letters together don't resemble an English word.

My guess is that you diffuse the "joke" much more effectively if you don't let it get to you and find a way to laugh along. I can see the response quoted sounding pedantic and leading to some eye rolling.

Also known as . . .

. . . Awesome?

. . . Outstanding?

. . . The Best?

Take your pick and make it work for you. :D

Axid is a heartburn/stomach medication.
You learn to get over these types of things.

I once had a shirt that said something about "Thetas" and people would ask me all the time "What does 'The Tas' mean?"

LOL

LMAO... damnit... poop on the brain!

At least everyone else's letters don't look like half a Playstation ad. or a physics equation.

Or a defunct wrestling stable. :p


I really haven't had any problems with the Greek spelling of ASA, but there are several orgs that also use the abbreviation 'ASA' - such as the American Softball Association. I was playing church league softball one night and someone said something along the lines of "ASA rules state that..." and I had to catch myself before I asked him what my sorority rules had to do with the game, and why he supposedly knew them....

Or the Asian Students Association, or the African Students Association. I remember seeing an article in the Carnegie Mellon paper about ASA and thought "since when do we have a chapter there?"

I've actually had an alum Panhel member call us Alpha Epsilon Alpha during a roll call. I guess I shouldn't have assumed that a) just because you're on Panhel you might know there are other chapters out there that weren't at your school b) people in a Greek organization would actually know the Greek alphabet. :mad::rolleyes::mad:

Imagine the jokes that the people who run this therapist referral site:

www.therapists.com

Don't sweat it. I think that probably every fraternity or sorority has had jokes made about their letters, their acronyms, or even the sound of their name.

The people who matter know what it's all about. If you want to make sure people realize that your letters aren't E A T, you might think about not using them in "cute" sayings anymore.

oh, um, yeah. What ree-xi said.

You can't get mad at people for riffing off something that you yourselves are perpetuating. When Greeks mis-translate their own letters, it makes them look really ridiculous.

My little bro in APO saw a flier that said AKA Party and asked me "Also known as a party? What else would it be called?"

lol

I remember a guy at a market once asking me who "roB" was.

I was staffing a Meet the Greeks table at my alma mater once and a girl came up to us and asked why we had her name on our banners and signs.

Her name was ARA. :(

In the other direction-- DG at my campus have been using the phrase "GET ON BOARD!" for their recruitment, with the AR in board replaced with a delta & a gamma. I get it, it's cute, but in my head it sounds like "get on bodged" every time I see it.

I agree.

I've had a few people ask me why I wear the scales of justice on my shirt. Never imagined Delta Tau Delta looking like that but now that I think of it it kind of fits with our history :)

LOL. I don't like it when people replace letters like that. We get it but it is "bodged."

This reminds of when the Theta chapter on my campus put up a huuuge recruitment banner on the breezeway (a central part of campus) that just said "THETA." and a non-greek friend of mine told me it was something about TA appreciation. TA, as in Teaching Assistant. I guess she thought it was supposed to emphasize the importance of THE TA? :p

My letters are OBVIOUSLY Greek and we STILL get "those AEO girls". Le sigh!

Not GLO-related, but I get a ton of jokes made about using 3 X's to mark things that are mine or the 3 X's on my tattoo.

Yes, I DO know Triple X. We hang all the time.

http://i56.tinypic.com/15qtagi.jpg

I've gotten the "roB" pointed out to me, too. But, my sister has repeatedly mentioned that Gamma Phi has "cool letters" -- she's a Zeta Tau Alpha and she laments that none of their letters are obviously part of the Greek Alphabet. It's all relative, I guess.

There is a web site that I trip over from time to time while searching for technical information. (It's a pay site, so I don't use it - you can always find the same information for free somewhere.) Their URL is www.experts-exchange.com. When they originally picked their domain name, there was no hyphen in it . . . www.expertsexchange.com

I've never really had any such problems with my letters per se, but you have no idea how many people can't tell the difference between Alpha Epsilon Phi and Alpha Epsilon Pi. :rolleyes:

I was looking for a gym bag for my husband the other day and went onto the Dick's Sporting Goods site... which, suffice it to say isn't dicks.com.

And I made this mistake at the office. Whoops.

I actually love that our letters look like EAT. Some of my favorite plays off of that:

Bow in the presence of grEATness
EAT our dust > perfect for Greek Week :p

On the other hand, we have the unfortunate acronym of SDT, which invariably gets mixed up with STD at some point.

Wait. Didn't you go to an engineering school?

Indeed...

When AEPhi colonized, AEPi had been on campus for decades. I can't tell you how many times I was around campus wearing letters and people approached me asking when AEPi had gone coed. :rolleyes:

I'm in Triangle, and you'd think that the distinct "Delta-T" crest wouldn't bring any trouble. But, I get this a lot:

"Hey, so you're a tri-delt?"
"What's that tri-delt?"

* facepalm *

My canned response is: "... don't think I'm hot enough"

I can't imagine what actual Tri-Delts go thru. "Hey, why do you have three Triangles on your shirt?"

First time I saw it was at UIFI and I thought it was Delta Tau. I'd heard of Triangle but never saw how they represented their name so I'd always assumed it was just written out.