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An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux and Ameslan). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of various names for such abbreviations (see nomenclature) nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). In English and most other languages, such abbreviations historically had limited use, but their coinage and use became much more common in the 20th century. Acronyms are a type of word formation process, and they are viewed as a subtype of blending.

Nomenclature[]

The term acronym is the name for a word from the first letters of each word in a series of words (such as sonar, created from sound navigation and ranging).[1] Attestations for "Akronym" in German are known from 1921, and for "acronym" in English from 1940.[2] While the word abbreviation refers to any shortened form of a word or a phrase, some have used initialism or alphabetism to refer to an abbreviation formed simply from, and used simply as, a string of initials.[citation needed]

Although the term acronym is widely used to describe any abbreviation formed from initial letters,[3] some dictionaries define acronym to mean "a word" in its original sense,[4][5][6] while some others include additional senses attributing to acronym the same meaning as that of initialism.[7][8][9] The distinction, when made, hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, or as a string of letters. In such cases, examples found in dictionaries include NATO (/ˈnt/), scuba (/ˈskbə/), and radar (/ˈrdɑr/) for acronyms, and FBI (/ˌɛfˌbˈ/) and HTML (/ˌˌtˌɛmˈɛl/) for initialism.[4][8][10] In the rest of this Wikipedia article, this distinction is not made.

There is no agreement on what to call abbreviations whose pronunciation involves the combination of letter names and words, such as JPEG (/ˈpɛɡ/) and MS-DOS (/ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/).

There is also some disagreement as to what to call abbreviations that some speakers pronounce as letters and others pronounce as a word. For example, the terms URL and IRA can be pronounced as individual letters: /ˌjuːˌɑrˈɛl/ and /ˌˌɑrˈ/, respectively; or as a single word: /ˈɜrl/ and /ˈaɪərə/, respectively. Such constructions, however—regardless of how they are pronounced—if formed from initials, may be identified as initialisms without controversy.

  1. REDIRECT Template:Original research


The spelled-out form of an acronym or initialism (that is, what it stands for) is called its expansion.

Comparing a few examples of each type[]

  • Pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters
    • AIDS: acquired immune deficiency syndrome
    • NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
    • Scuba: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
    • Laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
  • Pronounced as a word, containing non-initial letters
    • Amphetamine: alpha-methyl-phenethylamine
    • Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police)
    • Interpol: International Criminal Police Organization
    • Nabisco: National Biscuit Company
  • Pronounced as a word, containing a mixture of initial and non-initial letters
    • Necco: New England Confectionery Company
    • Radar: radio detection and ranging
  • Pronounced as a word or spelled out, depending on speaker or context
    • FAQ: ([fæk] or ef-a-cue) frequently asked question
    • IRA: When used for Individual Retirement Account, can be pronounced as letters (i-ar-a) or as a word [ˈaɪrə].
    • SAT(s): ([sæt] or ess-a-tee) (previously) Scholastic Achievement (or Aptitude) Test(s)(US) or Standard Assessment Test(s) (UK), now claimed not to stand for anything.[11]
    • SQL: ([siːkwəl] or ess-cue-el) Structured Query Language.
  • Pronounced as a combination of spelling out and a word
    • CD-ROM: (cee-dee-[rɒm]) Compact Disc read-only memory
    • IUPAC: (i-u-[pæk]) International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
    • JPEG: (jay-[pɛɡ]) Joint Photographic Experts Group
    • SFMOMA: (ess-ef-[moʊmə]) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
  • Spelled out only
    • BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
    • OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer
    • USA: The United States of America
  • Spelled out, but with a shortcut
    • AAA:
      • (triple A) American Automobile Association; abdominal aortic aneurysm; anti-aircraft artillery; Asistencia Asesoría y Administración
      • (three As) Amateur Athletic Association
    • IEEE: (I triple E) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
    • NAACP: (N double A C P) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
    • NCAA: (N C double A or N C two A or N C A A) National Collegiate Athletic Association
  • Shortcut incorporated into name
    • 3M: (three M) originally Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
    • E3: (E three) Electronic Entertainment Exposition
    • W3C: (W three C) World Wide Web Consortium
    • C4ISTAR: (C four I star) Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance[12]
  • Multi-layered acronyms
    • NAC Breda: (Dutch football club) NOAD ADVENDO Combinatie ("NOAD ADVENDO Combination"), formed by the 1912 merger of two clubs, NOAD (Nooit Opgeven Altijd Doorgaan "Never give up, always persevere") and ADVENDO (Aangenaam Door Vermaak En Nuttig Door Ontspanning "Pleasant by entertainment and useful by relaxation") from Breda[13][14]
    • GAIM: GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger
    • GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program
    • VHDL: VHSIC hardware description language, where VHSIC stands for very-high-speed integrated circuit.
  • Recursive acronyms, in which the abbreviation refers to itself
    • GNU: GNU's not Unix!
    • WINE: WINE Is Not an Emulator (originally, WINdows Emulator)
    • PHP: PHP hypertext pre-processor (formerly personal home page)
    • These may go through multiple layers before the self-reference is found:
      • HURD: HIRD of Unix-replacing daemons, where "HIRD" stands for "HURD of interfaces representing depth"
  • Pseudo-acronyms, which consist of a sequence of characters that, when pronounced as intended, invoke other, longer words with less typing (see also Internet slang)
    • CQ: cee-cue for "seek you", a code used by radio operators
    • IOU: i-o-u for "I owe you" (a true acronym would be IOY)
    • K9: kay-nine for "canine", used to designate police units utilizing dogs
    • Q8: cue-eight for "Kuwait"
  • Acronyms whose last abbreviated word is often redundantly included anyway
    • ATM machine: Automated Teller Machine machine
    • HIV virus: Human Immunodeficiency Virus virus
    • PIN number: Personal Identification Number number
    • LCD display: Liquid Crystal Display display

Historical and current use[]

Acronymy, like retronymy, is a linguistic process that has existed throughout history but for which there was little to no naming, conscious attention, or systematic analysis until relatively recent times. Like retronymy, it became much more common in the 20th century than it had formerly been.

Current use[]

Acronyms are used most often to abbreviate names of organizations and long or frequently referenced terms. The armed forces and government agencies frequently employ acronyms; some well-known examples from the United States are among the "alphabet agencies" (also jokingly referred to as "alphabet soup") created by Franklin D. Roosevelt under the New Deal. Business and industry also are prolific coiners of acronyms. The rapid advance of science and technology in recent centuries seems to be an underlying force driving the usage, as new inventions and concepts with multiword names create a demand for shorter, more manageable names. One representative example, from the U.S. Navy, is COMCRUDESPAC, which stands for commander, cruisers destroyers Pacific; it's also seen as "ComCruDesPac". "YABA-compatible" (where YABA stands for "yet another bloody acronym") is used to mean that a term's acronym can be pronounced but is not an offensive word (e.g., "When choosing a new name, be sure it is "YABA-compatible").[15]

The use of acronyms has been further popularized with the emergence of Short Message Systems (SMS). To fit messages into the 160-character limit of SMS, acronyms such as "GF" (girl friend), "LOL" (laughing out loud), and "DL" (download or down low) have been popularized into the mainstream.[16] Although prescriptivist disdain for such neologism is fashionable, and can be useful when the goal is protecting message receivers from crypticness, it is scientifically groundless when couched as preserving the "purity" or "legitimacy" of language; this neologism is merely the latest instance of a perennial linguistic principle—the same one that in the 19th century prompted the aforementioned abbreviation of corporation names in places where space for writing was limited (e.g., ticker tape, newspaper column inches).

Aids to learning the expansion without leaving a document[]

The expansion is typically given at the first occurrence of the acronym within a given text, for the benefit of those readers who do not know what it stands for. The capitalization of the original term is independent of it being acronymized, being lowercase for a term such as frequently asked questions (FAQ) but uppercase for a proper name such as the United Nations (UN).

In addition to expansion at first use, some publications also have a key listing of all acronyms used therein and what their expansions are. This is a convenience to readers for two reasons. The first is that if they are not reading the entire publication sequentially (which is a common mode of reading), then they may encounter an acronym without having seen its expansion. Having a key at the start or end of the publication obviates skimming over the text searching for an earlier use to find the expansion. (This is especially important in the print medium, where no search utility is available.) The second reason for the key feature is its pedagogical value in educational works such as textbooks. It gives students a way to review the meanings of the acronyms introduced in a chapter after they have done the line-by-line reading, and also a way to quiz themselves on the meanings (by covering up the expansion column and recalling the expansions from memory, then checking their answers by uncovering.) In addition, this feature enables readers to possess knowledge of the abbreviations to not have to encounter expansions (redundant to such readers).

Expansion at first use and the abbreviation-key feature are aids to the reader that originated in the print era, and they are equally useful in print and online. In addition, the online medium offers yet more aids, such as tooltips, hyperlinks, and rapid search via search engine technology.

Jargon[]

Acronyms often occur in jargon. An acronym may have different meanings in different areas of industry, writing, and scholarship. The general reason for this is convenience and succinctness for specialists, although it has led some to obfuscate the meaning either intentionally, to deter those without such domain-specific knowledge, or unintentionally, by creating an acronym that already existed.

The medical literature has been struggling to control the proliferation of acronyms as their use has evolved from aiding communication to hindering it. This has become such a problem that it is even evaluated at the level of medical academies such as the American Academy of Dermatology. [17]


As mnemonics[]

Acronyms are often taught as mnemonic devices, for example, in physics the colors of the visible spectrum are ROY G. BIV (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet). They are also used as mental checklists, for example in aviation: GUMPS, which is Gas-Undercarriage-Mixture-Propeller-Seatbelts. Other examples of mnemonic acronyms include CAN SLIM, and PAVPANIC.

References[]

  1. Fischer, Roswitha. (1998). Lexical change in present-day English: A corpus-based study of the motivation, institutionalization, and productivity of creative neologisms. Tübingen: G. Narr.
  2. Paris Gazette, by Lion Feuchtwanger; translated (from Exil)by Willa and Edwin Muir, New York, Viking Press, 1940. Chapter 47, Beasts of Prey, pages 665-666: "His first glance at the _Paris German News_ told Wiesener that this new paper was nothing like the old _P.G._. "They can call it the _P.G.N._ if they like", he thought, "but that's the only difference. Pee-gee-enn; what's the word for words like that, made out of initials? My memory is beginning to fail me. [p. 666] Just the other day there was a technical expression I couldn't remember. I must be growing old. "_P.G._ or _P.G.N._, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.... Pee-gee-enn. It's an acronym, that's what it is. That's what they call words made up of initials. So i remember it after all; that's at least something...." For "Akronym" used in 1921 or 1922, giving an example of "Agfa" film: Brockhaus Handbuch des Wissens in vier Bänden. Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, [1922-23, c1921-23] v.1 p. 37. [1]
  3. Merriam-Webster, Inc. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 1994. ISBN 0-87779-132-5. pp. 21–2:

    acronyms   A number of commentators (as Copperud 1970, Janis 1984, Howard 1984) believe that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations in being pronounceable as words. Dictionaries, however, do not make this distinction because writers in general do not:

    "The powder metallurgy industry has officially adopted the acronym 'P/M Parts'" —Precision Metal Molding, January 1966.
    "Users of the term acronym make no distinction between those pronounced as words … and those pronounced as a series of characters" —Jean Praninskas, Trade Name Creation, 1968.
    "It is not J.C.B.'s fault that its name, let alone its acronym, is not a household word among European scholars" —Times Literary Supp. 5 February 1970.
    "… the confusion in the Pentagon about abbreviations and acronyms—words formed from the first letters of other words" —Bernard Weinraub., N.Y. Times, 11 December 1978

    Pyles & Algeo 1970 divide acronyms into "initialisms", which consists of initial letters pronounced with the letter names, and "word acronyms", which are pronounced as words. Initialism, an older word than acronym, seems to be too little known to the general public to serve as the customary term standing in contrast with acronym in a narrow sense.

  4. 4.0 4.1 "acronym". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1991), Oxford University Press. p. 12: "a word, usu[ally] pronounced as such, formed from the initial letters of other words (e.g. Ernie, laser, Nato)".
  5. "acronym" "Webster's Online Dictionary (2001)", accessed Oct 7, 2008: Acronym "A word formed from the initial letters of a multi-word name."
  6. "acronym" "Cambridge Dictionary of American English", accessed Oct 5, 2008: "a word created from the first letters of each word in a series of words."
  7. "acronym." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, accessed May 2, 2006: "a word (as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also: an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters: see initialism "
  8. 8.0 8.1 Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55985-5. p. 120: Its encyclopedic entry for Abbreviation contains an inset entitled "Types of Abbreviation", which lists Initialisms, followed by Acronyms, which he describes simply as "Initialisms pronounced as single words" but then adds "However, some linguists do not recognize a sharp distinction between acronyms and initialisms, but use the former term for both."
  9. "acronym". Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (2003), Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-7607-4975-2. "1. a word created from the first letter or letters of each word in a series of words or a phrase. 2. a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately, as FBI for Federal Bureau of Investigation."
  10. "acronym" Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online Oxford University Press. Accessed May 2, 2006.
  11. CollegeBoard.com. CollegeBoard.com. URL accessed on 2010-09-16.
  12. Robinson, Paul (2008). "C4ISR" Dictionary of international security, Polity.
  13. Nooit opgegeven, al 95 jaar doorgezet!. NAC Breda.
  14. includeonly>Dart, James. "What is the longest team name in the world?", The Guardian, 14 December 2005. Retrieved on 2009-05-19.
  15. K. D. Nilsen & A. P. Nilsen (1995) The English Journal Vol. 84, No. 6.,"Literary Metaphors and Other Linguistic Innovations in Computer Language"
  16. Crystal, David. Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-954490-5
  17. Patel CB, Rashid RM (February 2009). Averting the proliferation of acronymophilia in dermatology: effectively avoiding ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC. J Am Acad Dermatol 60 (2): 340–4.
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