The following abbreviations are commonly found in the game and on the official forums.
A
- AA - Anti-Air
- AAR - After Action Report
- AC - Armoured Car brigade
- AFAIK - As far as I know
- Arm - Armoured division
- Art - Artillery brigade
- Arty - Artillery
- ASW - Anti-Submarine Warfare
- AT - Anti-Tank
- ATM - At the moment
B
- BB - Battleship
- BC - Battlecruiser
C
- CA - Heavy Cruiser
- CAG - Carrier Air Group
- CAS - Close Air Support (dive bombers)
- Cav - Cavalry or Semi-Motorized Cavalry
- CL - Light Cruiser
- CG - Consumer Goods
- CP - Central Planning
- CTD - Crash to desktop (usually because of a bug)
- CV - Carrier
- CVL - Light Carrier
- CVN - Nuclear-Powered Carrier
D
- DD - Destroyer or Doomsday
- DoW - Declaration of War
- Div - Division
E
- Eng - Engineer brigade
- ESE - Effective Supply Efficiency
- EscF - Escort Fighter
- ETA - Estimated Time of Arrival
- Exp - Experience level
F
- FM - Field Marshall or Free Market
- Fig - Fighter
G
- Gar - Garrison
- GC - Grand Campaign (1936 Scenario)
- GDE - Ground Defence Efficiency
- GPW - Great Patriotic War
H
- H Arm - Heavy Tank brigate attachment
- HA - Hard Attack value
- HoI - Hearts of Iron
- HQ - Headquarters
I
- IC - Industrial Capacity
- IIRC - If I recall correctly
- IMO/IMHO - In my opinion/In my honest (humble) opinion
- Inf - Infantry division
- IntF - Interceptor
- IRL - In real life
L
- L Arm - Light Armoured division
- LBA - Land Based Air
M
- Mar - Marines
- MBT - Main Battle Tank
- Mec - Mechanized Infantry
- Mil - Militia
- MM - Micromanagement
- Mot - Motorized Infantry
- MP - Police brigade or manpower or multiplayer
- Mtn - Mountain Infantry
N
- NAP - Non Aggression Pact
- Nav - Naval Bomber
O
- Org - Organisation level of division
- OOB - Order of Battle
P
- Par - Paratroopers
- Para - Airborne Infantry (Paratroopers)
- Pol - Police brigade
R
- R Art - Rocket artilery brigade
- RKKA - Raboche-Krest'yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya, the Soviet Land Forces
- RL - Real Life
- RotW - the Rest of the World
- RTS - Real Time Strategy
S
- SA - Soft Attack value or Sturmabteilung (also known as "Storm Troopers" and "Brownshirts")
- SCW - Spanish Civil War
- SH Arm - Super Heavy Tank brigade
- SP - Self-Propelled, usually as a prefix to another abbreviation, such as SP-A (Self-Propelled Artillery)
- SR - common abbreviation of Strategic Redeployment
- SS - Submarine
- SSBN - Nuclear-Powered Ballistic Missile Submarine ("Boomer")
- SSGN - Nuclear-Powered Guided Missile Submarine
- SSN - Nuclear-Powered Fast Attack Submarine
- Str - Strategic Bomber
T
- Tac - Tactical Bomber
- TC - Transport Capacity
- TP - Transport Ship
- Tra - Transport Plane
W
- WAD - Working as Designed
- WC - World Conquest
- WM - the World Market