Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. The other letters in Morse code contain two to five dots and/or dashes and are separated by spaces. SOS was chosen because it was both easy to tap out on a telegraph key and caught a telegraphist's attention, since it consisted of nine straight characters with no intervening spaces. It replaced CQD, from CQ, a signal simply alerting all stations on a telegraph line + D for "distress". SOS was officially adopted as the world-wide distress signal by the International Radio Telegraph Convention July 1, 1908. Word History: Today's Good Word is composed of the letters corresponding to the Morse Code distress call: The word remains, however, as a synonym for distress signal: "The presidential election in Florida in the year 2000 was an SOS from the US electoral system." Its symmetry helps keep it alive despite the loss of its original function: "I just received an SOS call from Hetty she has had enough summer camp and wants us to come get her." Fact or Fiction 109 subscribers Youve heard of the SOS signal, but what does SOS stand for Is it Save Our Souls Maybe it is Save Our Ships. Thus, SOS as a signal is three dits, three dahs, and three dits in that order. In Play: Now that the telegraph has given way to electronic communication systems, this Morse Code signal has become passé. In the SOS signal, the ‘S’ stands for three fast flashes (dits) and the ‘O’ for three longer flashes (dahs). Since three dots form the letter S and three dashes form an O in International Morse Code, though, the signal came to be called SOS for the sake of convenience. Mayday, from French (venir) m'aider "(come) help me", is the verbal equivalent of SOS for aircraft, ships, and other vehicles in distress. This puts it in a class with ID, as in ID's, ID'ed, ID'ing. To conclude, SOS stands for nothing officially and was created unintentionally and is not an acronym for anything. Since it is not an abbreviation, we think it more consistent to omit periods, even though it is pronounced letter by letter. Many think that it stands for "save our ship", "save our skins", or "save our souls", but it doesn't stand for anything and never has (see Word History). Notes: Notice that we spell today's word without periods even though it is widely taken to be an abbreviation.
Meaning: An emergency distress signal to elicit help a mayday.
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