Abbreviations/Glossary

AE: Attribute Editor
AI: Adobe Illustrator
AO: Ambient Occlusion
BG: Background (e.g. BG plate)
CV: Control Vertex
DM/Dis map: Displacement map - texture to create additional surface detail
FCP: Final Cut Pro
FG: Final Gather
FK: Forward Kinematics
GI: Global Illumination
Geo: Geometry
HiPoly : High polygon mesh - a dense mesh with a high number of poly faces
IK: Inverse Kinematics
LoPoly : Low polygon mesh - a mesh with a small number of poly faces
ma: Maya ASCII - file format
Max: 3ds Max - Maya's bitter rival (owned by Autodesk too)
mb: Maya Binary - file format
MEL: Maya Embedded Language - scripting language built into Maya
N-gon: Polygon or face with > 4 edges/sides
NM : Normal map - texture to simulate additional surface detail
obj: Geometry file format - contains geometry and UV information
persp: Perspective view or camera
Poly: Polygon or Face
Prefs: Preferences folder - on Windows, typically located in "...My Documents\maya\2013-x64\prefs"
PS: Adobe Photoshop
Tri: Triangle, a face with 3 edges/sides
UVTE: UV Texture Editor
Verts : Vertices, points on a mesh
Wires: Wireframe shading mode, usually wireframe on shaded
Z: Pixologic ZBrush

Link people asking about abbreviations to this post for reference. PM me to add more to the list.