Okay, Cinderella, let me try it a different way. Why say the PIN number? Because when PINs first came out of the closet, nobody who now wanted cash out of an ATM had ever heard of a personal identification number to acronyminate, so "PIN" came down on them like a sudden mystery with cash in her panties. People needed to use it and it didn't make any sense, so they stuck "number" after it. That caught on, the banks decided it was cheaper to use it than hire operators to field questions on what the hell a PIN was to begin with, and so they began to use it, too. That, anyway, is the explanation that seemed most likely at the time I was observing all this stuff going on. The same holds for ATMs, although why they needed both "teller" and "machine" in the longed-out version to begin with is beyond me. People probably just called them cash machines, because that's probably what most people used them for, to begin with. Preferring to use real live tellers for other transactions, because who the hell trusts these machines to record a deposit and, anyway, you might get lucky and it'll spew the works on you and you can take Brunhilde out for drinks and dinner and hoyotaho all night long. So that's about it, I would say. Language has this utility factor, see. People use it. And if something's needed but not particularly catchy out of the box, well, then people will jerry rig it, because it suits 'em better. And if it suits others better too, well, hey, there you go, another bastard,s born of our bastard tongue (See. "Spit Baby"). So the thing is, smell the roses: have fun with English. After all, she's only having fun with you.
