Linguist, lexicographer, radio host, public speaker

NWTF

So everybody knows about the woman who was told she couldn’t have a license plate with the letters “NWTF” on it. I read in many places that this is because that stands for “Now What the Fuck.”

I dispute that NWTF is any kind of established initialism or acronym meaning “Now What the Fuck.” In fact, outside of stories about this particular incident and Acronym Finder—which claims it stands for Now What the Freak (polite form), intending, I suppose, to avoid the word “fuck”—I find no uses of it anywhere on the Internet. Nowhere.

author avatar
Grant Barrett