+(TLA = "three letter acronym/abbreviation":-)
+
+abbreviations we try to use pervasively in the system
+
+As Dan Barlow pointed out long ago on the mailing list, unabbreviated
+names are easier to deal with than abbreviated names, because you
+never need to remember what abbreviation to use. That's true, but in a
+language like Lisp which depends on compound names for important
+things like structure accessors, that can lead to painful names like
+MAKE-EXTERNAL-ENTRY-POINT-LAMBDA-EXPRESSION and associated indenting
+confusion.
+
+In an effort to have some of the best of both worlds, I've attempted
+to impose standard abbreviations for some things. Ideally, you don't
+need to remember whether to abbreviate it, or what abbreviation to
+use, because it's always the same abbreviation.
+
+Some of these already were used pretty consistently in CMU CL.
+Others not so much, but in sbcl-0.7.0 I put some effort into
+making them more consistent.
+ ARG argument
+ FUN function
+ GC garbage collect(ion)
+ N new: number, as in e.g. N-PASSES or N-WORD-BITS
+ old: conventional prefix for temporary variables used to
+ implement evaluate-only-once semantics in macros
+ SB storage base (in compiler IR2)
+ SC storage class (in compiler IR2)
+ TN temporary name (?) (in compiler IR2)
+ VAR variable
+ XEP external entry point
+Making them even more consistent (within the limits of ANSI and
+MOP compatibility) would probably be good.