Acronym

"NYPD", an initialism for "New York Police Department", used on the side of a police car

An acronym, a type of abbreviation, is a word or name consisting of parts of the full name's words. Some authorities add that an acronym must be pronounced as a single word rather than individual letters, so considering NASA an acronym but not USA;[1][2] the latter they instead call an initialism[3] or alphabetism, for a string of initial letters which are pronounced individually.[a] Acronyms commonly are formed from initials alone, such as NATO, FBI, YMCA, GIF, EMT, and PIN, but sometimes use syllables instead, as in Benelux (short for Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), NAPOCOR (National Power Corporation), and TRANSCO (National Transmission Corporation). They can also be a mixture, as in radar (Radio Detection And Ranging) and MIDAS (Missile Defense Alarm System).

Acronyms pronounced as words include SWAT and UNESCO, while ones pronounced as individual letters include CIA, TNT, NPC, BLM, and ATM. Some use elements of both, such as JPEG (JAY-peg), CSIS (SEE-sis), and IUPAC (I-U-pak). Some are not universally pronounced either way, but by speaker's preference or by context, such as SQL (either "see-kwel" or "ess-cue-el").

The broader sense of acronym, which includes terms pronounced as individual letters, is the word's original meaning[4] and still in common use.[5] Dictionary and style-guide editors dispute whether the term acronym can be legitimately applied to abbreviations which are not pronounced "as words," nor do they agree on acronyms' spacing, casing, and punctuation.

  1. ^ McMahon, Mary (December 30, 2023). "What is the Difference Between an Acronym, Alphabetism, and Initialism?". LanguageHumanities. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
  2. ^ "Acronyms vs. Initialisms: What's the Difference?". Proofed. April 3, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
  3. ^ Brinton, Laurel J.; Brinton, Donna M. (2010). The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 110. ISBN 978-90-272-8824-0. Retrieved April 3, 2022.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference OED was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Acronym". The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Inc. January 22, 2020. Archived from the original on January 22, 2020. Retrieved January 22, 2020. Some people feel strongly that acronym should only be used for terms like NATO, which is pronounced as a single word, and that initialism should be used if the individual letters are all pronounced distinctly, as with FBI. Our research shows that acronym is commonly used to refer to both types of abbreviations.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · View on Wikipedia

Developed by Nelliwinne