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Comment by zelphirkalt | Hacker News Reader

If those are the most prominent things you find for that abbreviation, I have to start doubting Wikipedia. As a German seeing that abbreviation so freely used is always a little bit shocking.

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The German one isn't relevant for post-war American ships. Hope that helps.

They aren't. I think that's the point. If you type "SS" into Wikipedia you get straight to Schutzstaffel. It's hard to find what it means in the context of ships.

Why would you assume those are the most prominent search results, when they just said they were difficult to find?

I assume the problem was that prominence of certain German use makes finding other meaning of this phrase tricky.

In all fairness, the term is much older than what that acronym's come to mean.

I always thought it stood for "Set Sail", but this definition is more pragmatic.

That’s a rather interesting interpretation. Why would a ship name prefix stand for a verb phrase rather than something that describes the vessel? To be honest the exact meaning was TIL for me too, I always assumed the obvious "Steam Ship", similarly to other common prefixes like "MS" for "Motor [ICE] Ship" or "SY" for "Sailing Yacht".

I suppose there are certain things that click together as a kid, and you never truly question them, even well into adulthood, until an external force acts on it. My very loose memory was of some sort of cartoon ship departing, along with the phrase "Set Sail!". The phrase matched the acronym so I guess they were forever associated in my head.

Memories can be odd, and I assume everyone has a similar story of some early situation.

Wait until you learn about SS the government security service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service

(Officially USSS, but it's often abbreviated to SS in common parlance.)

Even in German speaking forums for pregnant women it’s used liberally to abbreviate “Schwangerschaft” (pregnancy), which can result in some pretty funny phrases.

I'm _amazed_ they didn't change that after WW2.

In practice this is why it is abbreviated USSS, and not SS. I've never heard of anyone with a brain calling it just "SS."

That "with a brain" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Or Social Security.

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