Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
My point was that describing the
"1½ Strutter" as simply the "Strutter" was akin to describing a "3-holer" as simply a "holer", that's to say utterly meaningless.
So quite analogous, really. 
Except that '3 Holer' is not an abbreviation for the Aircraft name
per se.
Almost every aircraft I worked on in my 45+ years as a techie had some form of abbreviation or nickname (as Duncan posted above),the only aircraft type which was not abbreviated had such a short name - it really was not worth it
It is normal human behaviour to abbreviate everything down to the minimum amount of syllables otherwise one is having to cope with long drawn out mouthfulls of syllables on an hourly basis
- aviation is most certainly the spiritual home for abbreviations/acronyms
To return to one of pypards earlier rants
I'm really irritated! We wouldn't say, "Hawker Hurri", or "North American F-100 Super
He surely does realise that almost every aircraft in history has had a 'nickname' or abbreviation.
So 'Hurri',Spit,Mossie,Whirly/Crikey,Lanc are just a few off the top of me head.