TL Timeline

WI What if?

DBWI Double Blind What If

(I)OTL (In) Our TimeLine, but can also refer to OtherTimeLines.com.

SHWI Soc-history-what-if, another AH forum.

ATL Alternate TimeLine

(I)TTL (In) This TimeLine

POD Point of Divergence. (See also PODs.)

FH Future History

TL-191 The How Few Remain Timeline

DoD The Decades of Darkness Timeline

LTTW The Look to the West Timeline

TABAE There'll Always Be An England, a story by Thande

UCS The Universal Colour Scheme

ASB Alien Space Bat - A plot-device creature capable of ISOTing anything up to whole planets, to allow time travel and teleportation, to create and destroy life, make everyone change sex and give them the arms of a bear, and so on. Used as an explanation for scenarios which are magical or otherwise unlikely. By AH.com Convention, this category also includes WIs within fictional universes, such as Star Wars.

ISOT Derived from the novel Island In the Sea of Time, “ISOT” is used as a verb (transporting an area of Earth through time) or a noun (the name for a timeline that involves an ISOT, or a reference to the event). Strictly speaking “ISOT” should only be applied to a large area such as a country or island, but AH.commers have taken to using it in lieu of ‘time travel’ in general, as in the phrase “I’ll ISOT myself to 1914” for example.

Mosaic Earth Mostly attributed with the ISOT whereas a “Swiss Cheesed” Earth has many nations from different TL’s and/or with a single nation of that said Earth left behind. It is the staple/mainstay of the Shared Earth Forum and has a history stemming from the First Mosaic Earth game on the Old Board. To date it is either on it’s 20th or 22nd incarnation, depending on who one is asking, and if one has even kept up with the numbering.

Wank AH where one nation is distinctly preferred, more than would be a) understandable, b) realistic and/or c) tasteful. Typical Nationwank: USA conquers both American continents; Russia conquers Eurasia; Japan creates its Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere; British Empire / Ottoman Empire / Austria-Hungary / Roman Empire / Napoleon’s Empire lives until today and becomes yet even stronger; Germany wins WW1 / WW2; and so on. There are also non-national forms of Wank, such as ‘techwank’, in which the side with the superior technology (especially in ISOTs from the future) ALWAYS wins, and we’re expected to cheer.

For even more outrageous scenarios, Doctor What coined the term “nation-bukkake”.

Balkanisation (not purely used in AH) The breakup of one nation into many smaller ones.

Finlandisation (not purely used in AH) A state being neutralised by agreement between greater powers. A reference to the treatment of Finland by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War.

“The Sea-mammal that shall not be named” (And other variations) See Sealion

Thankee: Archaic English for ‘thank you’, an abbreviation of ‘thank ye’ (using the now unused singular form of you, ‘ye’). Has become popular on the forum since Thande used it a lot in his TABAE stories.

Interesting (in the Chinese sense): As in the Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’. Used if you want to describe a war or a genocide as intellectually ‘interesting’, but to acknowledge that using the word alone would sound insensitive.

Lesser Used Acronyms

SYW Seven Years War

ARW/AWI American Revolutionary War/American War of Independence

ECW English Civil War

ACW American Civil War

WW1 World War 1

WW2 World War 2

CSA Confederate States of America

HRE Holy Roman Empire (also ‘HRE-ise’, which means Balkanise, but more so)

NOOBWI A relativly new term coined by AHF, and adopted by others. The NOOBWI thread involves the board members taking on the personas of Alternate History Noobs. NOOBWI threads are marked by relatively basic AH questions (ex: WI the Nazis won WWII), and a near total disregard for conventional AH, particularly the Butterfly effect.

Rest of internet abbreviations (aka IIRC, BTW, OMG...) is part of this...

Off Topic