3-letter words starting with a
- alp — (in the European Alps) an area of pasture above the valley bottom but below the mountain peaks
- als — autograph letter signed
- alt — (esp of vocal music) high in pitch
- alu — arithmetic and logic unit
- ama — American Medical Association
- amb — Ambassador
- amd — age-related macular degeneration
- ame — a soul
- amf — Australian Military Forces
- amg — Allied Military Government
- ami — a male friend
- aml — A Manufacturing Language
- amm — antimissile (missile)
- amn — airman
- amo — America's Multimedia Online
- amp — An amp is the same as an ampere.
- ams — Additional Member System: a voting system in which some candidates are elected for geographic constituencies and others are elected by proportional representation using party lists. The voter has two votes: one for a party and the other for a candidate in a constituency
- amt — amount
- amu — atomic mass unit
- amy — a feminine name
- an- — not; without
- ana — (of ingredients in a prescription) in equal quantities
- anc — African National Congress
- and — You use and to link two or more words, groups, or clauses.
- ane — one
- ani — any of several gregarious tropical American birds of the genus Crotophaga: family Cuculidae (cuckoos). They have a black plumage, long square-tipped tail, and heavily hooked bill
- ann — a common girl's name
- anr — Automatic Network Routing
- ans — answer
- ant — Ants are small crawling insects that live in large groups.
- anu — the sky god
- any — You use any in statements with negative meaning to indicate that no thing or person of a particular type exists, is present, or is involved in a situation.
- anz — Australian and New Zealand Banking Group
- aob — AOB is a heading on an agenda for a meeting, to show that any topics not listed separately can be discussed at this point, usually the end. AOB is an abbreviation for 'any other business'.
- aoc — appellation d'origine contrôlée
- aoh — Ancient Order of Hibernians: an Irish Catholic nationalist association founded in the 19th century; an important political force up to the founding of the Irish Free State (1922)
- aop — aspect-oriented programming
- aor — album-oriented rock
- aos — 1. (programming) /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) A PDP-10 instruction that took any memory location and added 1 to it. AOS meant "Add One and do not Skip". Why, you may ask, does the "S" stand for "do not Skip" rather than for "Skip"? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never skipped. For similar reasons, AOJ meant "Add One and do not Jump". Even more bizarre, SKIP meant "do not SKIP"! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say "SKIPA". Likewise, JUMP meant "do not JUMP"; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the JRST (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of assembler programming. 2. (operating system) /A-O-S/ or /A-os/ A Multics-derived operating system supported at one time by Data General. A spoof of the standard AOS system administrator's manual ("How to Load and Generate your AOS System") was created, issued a part number, and circulated as photocopy folklore; it was called "How to Goad and Levitate your CHAOS System". 3. (operating system) Algebraic Operating System, in reference to those calculators which use infix operators instead of postfix notation.
- ap- — ad-
- apa — American Pharmaceutical Association
- apb — APB is an abbreviation for all-points bulletin.
- apc — acetylsalicylic acid, phenacetin, and caffeine; the mixture formerly used in headache and cold tablets
- ape — Apes are chimpanzees, gorillas, and other animals in the same family.
- api — application programming interface
- apl — a high-level computer language employing a large number of special symbols, used esp. in mathematical applications
- apm — Advanced Power Management
- apo — the highest mountain in the Philippines, on SE Mindanao: active volcano with three peaks. Height: 2954 m (9690 ft)
- app — An app is a computer program that is written and designed for a specific purpose.
- apr — Abbreviation of April.