>>> I'm not sure what a MIP is, but assuming your talking about MIPS,
>> As for what "MIP" is, it's the singular of "MIPS".  [...minor
>> discourse on back-formation...]
> ...well... the only expansions of MIPS I've ever seen are:
> 	- Microprocessor without Interlocking Pipeline Stages
> and
> 	- Millions of Instructions Per Second
> ...neither of which create an acronym which is plural.

(I have seen one other, "Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed", but
that's mostly irrelevant here.)

I *know* MIPS is not originally plural.  That is the way back-formation
works: a word is taken to be something it didn't start out as, and some
inference is made based on that.  As with "pease", which was originally
a mass noun, but was taken to be a plural; based on the assumption that
it's a plural, the singular "pea" was deduced.  (In the case of "pease"
-> "pea" -> "peas", this happened long enough ago that "pease" has been
forgotten and now "pea" is a count noun with a regular plural.)  Or one
of the other examples I gave: "laser", originally an acronym, was taken
as an instance of the regular process by which a verb turns into a noun
naming something/someone which acts as described by the verb (as "walk"
gives rise to "walker", one who walks, or "cut" to "cutter", that which
cuts).  Then, based on fitting "laser" into this paradigm (incorrectly,
originally), the verb "lase" was deduced - which by now is considered a
word in its own right even by dictionary makers (or at least, an online
webster I have access to lists it).

I contend that essentially the same process is happening now, with MIPS
as the original, irregular, term taken as a regularly-formed plural and
MIP as the deduced singular.  The actual origin of "MIPS" matters not a
bit to this process, no more than the original root of "pease" affected
the formation of "pea" from it.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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