You have seen those letters before. Generally they are spelled out in sand on an accidentally inhabited island or in rocks somewhere in the vast Wannaskan wilderness. The letters that we use when seeking to be rescued from a disaster are SOS.
So what does SOS stand for? I always thought they were an acronym for Save Our Ship, or Save Our Souls, but I was wrong. Chicken nugget enthusiasts might consider it a clever way of saying "Send Out Sauce" but they would be mistaken too. The truth is...SOS doesn't stand for anything!
In fact, the signal isn’t even really supposed to be three individual letters. It’s just a continuous Morse code string of three dots, three dashes, and three dots all run together with no spaces or full stops (…---…).
In International Morse code, three dots form the letter "S" and three dashes form an “O”. The signal eventually came to be called an “SOS” for the sake of convenience. This all started around 1906, which means that the Titanic was able to send out that signal shortly after running out of tartar sauce.
Way back in the days before smartphones you had to use Morse code to communicate over long distances. This is not to be confused with Norse code, which is a way of communicating that you are planning on leaving, but will be staying for several more goodbyes.
So(s) there you go. If it ever comes up in a conversation, you can tell them the truth about SOS. It is something that meant nothing but came to mean something.
--. .-. . .- - / .--. --- ... - --..-- / -- .-. .-.-.- / .... --- - / -.-. --- -.-. --- -.-.--!
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