TRIPLE A NOUN (WAR AND WEAPONRY)

In military jargon: anti-aircraft artillery. Etymology: A form representing the way in which many people would say AAA, itself the initial letters of Anti-Aircraft Artillery. History and Usage: In the form AA or AAA, the abbreviation has been in use since the First World War among the military. What brought it into public focus in particular was its use by journalists reporting the Iraqi response to allied air attacks on Baghdad and other Iraqi cities during the Gulf War of 1991. It seems it was only in newspaper reporting of the wars of the previous decade that the form triple A started to be written down rather than being a way of speaking AAA. There was an awful lot of triple-A (antiaircraft artillery) in the area and that was a surprise. Christian Science Monitor 8 Dec. 1983, p. 52 Viewers heard debriefing pilots say triple A, or A.A.A....in reference to cannons and machine guns but not surface-to-air missiles. New York Times Magazine 3 Feb. 1991, p. 8