Alternating current?
Direct current would be the non-wiggly kind.
Hi Bob,
Yes, that's what I thought when I first heard the term for the same reason as you: the wiggly symbol on schematics to show AC. I'm pretty sure that's how it originated, most probably by techi types in the Royal Navy, but it's become more ubiquitous and taken on a subtler meaning over the years, although like I said in the opening post I never did find a definitive answer to its meaning.
I see you are from Canada so perhaps you haven't come across the term before. It seems to have become a catch-all for every signal: DC, radio frequency, twisted pair data links, light ... It means I need to talk about this but I don't know anything about electronics and I really don't want to know. It's jocular and in good spirit though.
There's another term which is slightly related, that used to raise the engineers blood pressure at the company where I worked: 'It's only engineering'. This was the catch phrase of one of the project managers, I'll call him Sidney, who's basically thought that engineers where low level and rather like tools- you just use them as necessary and then hang them back in the rack when not required.
So, for example, you may be at a meeting with the customer, normally the military in our case. The customer may say: "Using the 12V power in a standard truck could you provide a portable system that would track an aircraft at a hundred miles and produce a digital readout of its size?" The engineer might ask, "Would that be with the truck engine running?" And Sidney would come out with, "We won't worry about that- IT'S ONLY ENGINEERING".