Last week, I was among a group of friends and commented on the fact that someone had removed a sticker from their microwave. I used the word "mic" to abbreviate microwave, and people thought I was talking about a microphone. This made me wonder if anyone else actually says that or if my mixed word usage (I'm from New Jersey, but have been living in California for 6+ years) resulted in an original abbreviation.
I'm pretty sure I have been abbreviating microwave this way for quite a while, though. Is it an East Coast thing? Is it a personal thing? I googled for it and checked WordReference, but mic is basically an abbreviation for microphone any way you slice it, it would seem.
So is this a regionalism that others share or is it an abbreviation with low general comprehension?
Best Answer
Searching for "heat it in the mic" (in quotes) on Google comes up with a number of results, most of them of the forum/blog variety. I think this is evidence enough to show that mic is in use as an abbreviation for microwave, particularly (as you'd expect) in casual contexts.
As I've never heard it used before and have lived in many different US states, I'm inclined to say it's quite dialectical. Which dialect, though, I'm not sure.