Acronym and initialism
Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, or scuba, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form.
Of the two words, acronym is the much more frequently used and known; and some dictionaries, speakers, and writers use it in describing all abbreviations formed from initial letters. However, this is a contentious point, and there are also some (including the Oxford English Dictionary and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language) who differentiate between the two terms, restricting acronym to pronounceable words formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the constituent words—such as NATO [neɪtoʊ], not [ɛn.eɪ.ti.oʊ], from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or radar [reɪdɑɹ], from radio detection and ranging—and restricting initialism to abbreviations pronounced as the names of the individual letters—such as TLA [ti.ɛl.eɪ] or XHTML [ɛks.eɪtʃ.ti.ɛm.ɛl].
In English-language discussion of syllabic languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, acronym describes short forms that take the first character of each (multi-character) element. For example, Beijing University—Beijing Daxue (literally, North-Capital Big-School)—is widely known as Beida (literally, North-Big). In describing such languages, the term initialism is irrelevant.
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History
In the English language, the widespread use of acronyms, initialisms, and contractions is a relatively new linguistic phenomenon, having become most popular in the 20th and 21st centuries. As literacy rates rose, and as sciences and technologies advanced, bringing with them more complicated terms and concepts, the practice of abbreviating terms became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899; acronym, in 1943. The word acronym comes from Greek: ακρος, akros, "topmost, extreme" + ονομα, onoma, "name".
Nonetheless, earlier examples of acronyms in other languages exist. The early Christians in Rome used a fish as a symbol for Jesus in part because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthus), which was said to stand for Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ (Iesous CHristos THeou (h)Uios Soter: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior). Evidence of this interpretation dates from the 2nd and 3rd centuries and is preserved in the catacombs of Rome. And for centuries, the Church has used the inscription INRI over the crucifix, which stands for the Latin Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum ("Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews").
Initialisms are known to have been used in Rome dating back even earlier than the Christian era. For example, the official name for the Roman Empire (and the Republic before it) was abbreviated as SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), showing a clear precedent.
In Hebrew
People
Acronyms have been widely used in Hebrew since at least the Middle Ages. Several important rabbis are referred to with acronyms of their names. For example, Baal Shem Tov is called Besht, Rav Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides) was the Rambam, and Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (Nahmanides) was the Ramban.
Text
Bodies of work
The usage of Hebrew acronyms extends to liturgical groupings: the word Tanakh is an acronym for Torah (Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im (Book of Prophets), and Ketuvim (Hagiographa).
Acrostics
Most often, though, one will find use of acronyms as acrostics, in both prayer, poetry, and kabbalistic works. Because each Hebrew letter also has a numeric value, embedding an acrostic may give an additional layer of meaning to these works. It is a common part of Jewish thought to make inferences based on hidden acrostics; as example: a Man (he: אישׁ) and a Woman (he: אשׁה), married, form not just a human, but a spiritual relationship, for, if one removes the name of G-d, by taking a letter from each - the yud and the hey - one is left with the word for destruction (he: אשׁ lit: fire). So much can be interpreted from Hebrew, and attributed to it, and inferred by it, that a whole theories and theoretical systems have developed, notibly the Bible Code.
Examples
- Shokhen Ad - prayer
- Lines are written so that letters line up vertically, spelling the name Yitzchak, which may refer to the patriarch Yitzchak, or to an unknown author.
- Ashrei - prayer
- The first letter of every verse starts with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet
Tetragrammaton
- Main article: Tetragrammaton
Greek, tetragrammaton is the Hebrew spelling of the Abrahamic god, that is, יהוה (commonly transliterated as "YHVH", "YHWH", "Yahweh", or "Jehovah"), which Jews do not speak aloud, and protect when written (see Geniza). Soferei S"TM are prohibited from correcting, modifying, or erasing this word, or any series of four words which all begin, or all end, with these letters. Friday night Shabbat Kiddush begins "Vayahi Erev, Vayahi Voker, Yom HaShishi. Vayachulu Hashamyim ..." Even though the first sentence is unecessary to say, it would be breaking up the tetragrammaton not to say it. The first four words, then, are completely unecessary, but it would make the next two words grammatically incorrect. Therefore, Jews whisper the first four words, and say the rest out loud.
Usage
Acronyms are used most often, to abbreviate names of organizations, long, or frequently-referenced terms. The armed forces and government agencies frequently employ acronyms and initialisms, perhaps most famous were the "alphabet agencies" created by Franklin D. Roosevelt under the New Deal.
Jargon
Acronyms and initialisms often occur in jargon. An acronym may have different meanings in different areas of industry, writing, and scholarship. This has led some to obfuscate the meaning either diliberately to deter those without such domain-specific knowledge, or unintentionally by creating acronyms that already existed.
Bias
Because acronyms so closely relate to the common vernacular, they facilitate widespread usage. Then, it is possible for acronyms to enter the lexicon without people knowing their etymology.
An example of this is the use of B.C. and A.D. in dating events. The earliest instance recorded in the OED for A.D. (Latin Anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") is from 1579. B.C. stands for Before Christ. These terms distinguish those years before a speculated birth year of Jesus of Nazereth from those during and after his life, and were developed by Christians. They are used for both the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
BCE ("Before the Common Era") and CE ("Common Era")—entirely equivalent to B.C. and A.D., respectively—are seen as alternative abbreviations and less Christian-centric. The "Common Era", sometimes known as the "Christian Era" or "Current Era", begins with the year 1 and continues through the present. Although Common Era was first used by some Christians in an age when Christianity was the prevalent religion of the West (which Christianity still is), it is now preferred by some as a religiously neutral alternative. Yet, others criticize it as an unnecessary euphemism or an attempt at political correctness, partly because, while the terminology may change, the dating system's origins do not; some objection to these alternatives is based on the argument that, if one is using the dating system devised by a group, one ought also to use the terminology that the group developed for the system. It has its equivalents in other languages. For example, Chinese uses its literal translation, gōngyuán (公元), for date notation.
Early examples in English
- A.M. (Latin ante meridiem, "before noon") and P.M. (Latin post meridiem, "after noon")
- O.K., a term of disputed origin, dating back at least to the early 19th century, now used around the world
- n.g., for "no good", from 1838
Written usage
Written presentation of both acronyms and initialisms varies from person to person and from one body's suggested or required usage to that of another.
Punctuation
Traditionally, abbreviations have been written using a full stop / period / point to mark the part that was deleted. In the case of most acronyms and initialisms, each letter is an abbreviation of a separate word and, in theory, should get its own termination mark. Such punctuation is diminishing with the belief that the presence of all-capital letters is sufficient to indicate that the word is an abbreviation.
Some influential style guides, such as that of the BBC, no longer require punctuation, or even proscribe it. Larry Trask, American author of The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, states categorically that, in British English, "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete"[1].
Nevertheless, some influential style guides, many of them American, still require periods in certain instances. The New York Times’ guide recommends them after unpronounceable abbreviations, such as K.G.B., but not for pronounceable ones (acronyms), such as NATO.[2]
Some style manuals also base the letters' case on their number. The New York Times, for example, keeps NATO in all capitals (while several guides in the British press may render it Nato), but uses lowercase in Unicef because it is more than four letters.
Some acronyms undergo assimilation into ordinary words, when they become common: for example, when technical terms become commonplace among non-technical people. Often they are then written in lower case, and eventually it is widely forgotten that the word was derived from the initials of others: scuba ("Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus") and laser ("Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"), for instance. The term anacronym has been coined as a portmanteau of the words anachronism and acronym to describe acronyms whose original meaning is unknown to most speakers.
When a multiple-letter abbreviation is formed from a single word, periods are generally proscribed, although they may be common in informal, personal usage. TV, for example, may stand for a single word (television or transvestite, for instance), and is generally spelled without punctuation (except in the plural). Although PS stands for the single word postscript (or the Latin postscriptum), it is often spelled with periods (P.S.). (Wikiquote abbreviates television as T.V.)
Plurals
The traditional style of pluralizing single letters with the addition of ’s ("There are two B’s in rubber") was naturally extended to some of the earliest initialisms, which tended to be written with periods to indicate the omission of letters; some writers still pluralize initialisms in this way. Additionally, because an apostrophe can stand for missing letters, an abbreviation of compact discs, for example, can logically be rendered CD’s. Some style guides continue to require such apostrophes—perhaps partly to make it clear that the lowercase s is only for pluralization and would not appear in the singular form of the word, for some acronyms and abbreviations do include lowercase letters.
However, it has become common among many writers to inflect initialisms as ordinary words, using simple s, without an apostrophe, for the plural. In this case, compact discs becomes CDs. The logic here is that the apostrophe should be restricted to possessives: for example, "the CD’s label" (the label of the compact disc).
Multiple options arise when initialisms are spelled with periods and are pluralized: for example, compact discs may become C.D.’s, C.D’s, or C.D.s. Possessive plurals that also include apostrophes for mere pluralization and periods may appear especially complex: for example, "the C.D.’s’ labels" (the labels of the compact discs). Some see this as yet another reason to use apostrophes only for possessives and not for plurals
The argument that initialisms should have no different plural form (for example, "If D can stand for disc, it can also stand for discs") is generally disregarded because of the practicality in distinguishing singulars and plurals. This is not the case, however, when the abbreviation is understood to describe a plural noun already: for example, U.S. is short for United States, but not United State. In this case, the options for making a possessive form of an abbreviation that is already in its plural form without a final s may seem awkward: for example, U.S.’, U.S’, U.S.’s, etc. In such instances, possessive abbreviations are often foregone in favor of simple attributive usage (for example, "the U.S. economy") or expanding the abbreviation to its full form and then making the possessive (for example, "the United States' economy").
Abbreviations that come from single, rather than multiple, words—such as TV (television)—are pluralized both with and without apostrophes, depending on the logic followed: that the apostrophe shows the omission of letters and makes the s clear as only a pluralizer (TV’s); or that the apostrophe should be reserved for the possessive (TVs).
Especially in the 18th century, some writers of English considered numerals as abbreviations of whole words and punctuated them accordingly: for example, Thomas Jefferson, who employed such usage, might have abbreviated "I have two apples" with "I have 2. apples", with a period after the numeral. This consideration of numerals as abbreviations of whole words may be the reason behind the use of apostrophes in the plurals that denote decades: for example, the 1970’s.
Some writers omit this apostrophe, and would use it only for the possessive: for example "In 1970's mid-term elections, ..." (the mid-term elections of the year 1970). In The New York Times, the pluralizing apostrophe is retained, but the truncating apostrophe when the century numerals are omitted is not used, so that the aforementioned decade is described in the NYT as the 70's. The television sitcom That ’70s Show uses the apostrophe for the omission of the century numerals and forms the plural with a simple s. It is assumed that, in the NYT, something belonging to the decade of the 1970s might be described as the 1970’s’ or the 70’s’.
In the German language, numerals also appear with periods after them; but these are abbreviations of the ordinals. For example, the word zwei (two) is abbreviated with 2 (the numeral alone), but the word zweite (second) is abbreviated with 2. (period after the numeral).
In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the initialism is used to indicate plural words: for example, the Spanish EE.UU., for Estados Unidos (United States). This convention is followed for a limited number of English abbreviations, such as pp. for pages (although this is actually derived from the Latin abbreviation for paginae).
Acronyms that are now always rendered in the lowercase are pluralized as regular English nouns: for example, lasers.
When an acronym is part of a function in computing that is conventionally written in lowercase, it is common to use an apostrophe to pluralize or otherwise conjugate the token. This practice results in sentences like "Be sure to remove extraneous dll’s" (more than one dll). In computer lingo, it is common to use the name of a computer program, format or function, acronym or not, as a verb; for example "Sam zipped the files" or "Sam zip’ed the files" means that John used the program zip on the files to combine and/or compress them. In such 'verbification' of initialisms, there is confusion about how to conjugate: for example, if the verb IM (pronounced as separate letters) means to send (someone) an instant message, the past tense may be rendered IM’ed, IMed, IM’d, or IMd—and the third-person singular present indicative may be IM’s or IMs.
Numerals and constituent words
While typically abbreviations exclude the initials of short function words (such as "and", "or", "of", or "to"), they are sometimes included in acronyms to make them pronounceable. Numbers (both cardinal and ordinal) in names are often represented by digits rather than initial letters: e.g., 4GL (Fourth generation language) or G77 (Group of 77). To add to the confusion, sometimes numbers within an abbreviation or acronym represent a number of removed letters, as in I18N (Internationalization) or L10N (Localization).
In some cases, an acronym or initialism has been turned into a name. For example, the letters making up the name of the SAT (pronounced as letters) college entrance test no longer officially stand for anything. This trend has been common with many companies hoping to retain their brand recognition while simultaneously moving away from what they saw as an outdated image: American Telephone and Telegraph became AT&T (its parent/child, SBC, followed suit prior to its acquisition of AT&T and after its acquisition of a number of the other Baby Bells, changing from Southwestern Bell Corporation), Kentucky Fried Chicken became "KFC", British Petroleum became "BP" to emphasize that it was no longer only an oil company (captured by its motto "beyond petroleum"), Silicon Graphics, Incorporated became "SGI" to emphasize that it was no longer only a computer graphics company. DVD now has no official meaning: its advocates couldn't agree on whether the initials stood for "Digital Video Disc" or "Digital Versatile Disc", and now both terms are used.
Initialisms may have advantages in international markets: for example, some national affiliates of International Business Machines are legally incorporated as "IBM" (or, for example, "IBM Canada") to avoid translating the full name into local languages. Similarly, "UBS" is the name of the merged Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation. Rebranding can lead to RAS syndrome, as when Trustee Savings Bank became "TSB Bank." A few high-tech companies have taken the redundant acronym to the extreme such as "ISM Information Systems Management Corp." and "SHL Systemhouse Ltd.". Another common example is RAM memory, which is redundant since RAM already stands for "Random Access Memory", as well as NIC card ( "Network Interface Card"). New credit card technology has led to many a shop assistant inviting customers to input their "PIN number", despite the acronym already including the word. Other examples of redundant acronym syndrome include the ATM Machine (Automatic Teller Machine Machine) and the SAT Test (Standard Achievment Test Test)
Sometimes, the initials are kept but the meaning is changed. SADD, for instance, originally Students Against Driving Drunk, changed the full form of its name to Students Against Destructive Decisions. YM originally stood for Young Miss, and later Young & Modern, but now stands for simply Your Magazine.
When initialisms are defined in print, especially in the case of industry-specific jargon, the words forming the abbreviation are often capitalized for clarity. While this would be perfectly acceptable for proper nouns like Kentucky Fried Chicken, some usage writers have argued that it is technically incorrect for other terms like storage area network. Correct or not, such usage is widespread in English publications. (Sidenote: however it is definitely incorrect to 'back-capitalise' e.g., from SAN to give 'Storage Area Network'.)
Nomenclature
"Initialism" originally referred to abbreviations formed from initials, without reference to pronunciation, but during the middle portion of the twentieth century, when acronyms and initialisms saw more use than ever before, the word "acronym" was coined for abbreviations which are pronounced as a word, like "NATO" or "AIDS". The term "initialism" is now typically taken to refer to abbreviations which are pronounced by sounding out the name of each constituent letter (e.g., HTML). However, in general usage, "acronym" is used by some speakers and writers to cover both forms, while others prefer to observe a difference. In addition, to many users, "initialisms" are also simply known as "abbreviations".
There is no agreement as to what to call abbreviations that contain single letters, but can otherwise be pronounced as a word, such as JPEG (jay-peg) or MS-DOS (em-ess-doss). These abbreviations are sometimes referred to as acronym-initialism hybrids, although they are grouped by most under the broad meaning of "acronym".
Examples
- pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters:
- pronounced as a word, containing non-initial letters:
- pronounced as a word or names of letters, depending on speaker or context:
- IRA: (ira or eye-are-ay): When used for Irish Republican Army, always pronounced as letters; when used for Individual Retirement Account, can be pronounced as letters or as a word.
- FAQ: (fack or ef-ay-kyu) Frequently asked questions
- SAT: (sat or es-ay-tee) Scholastic Achievement (or Aptitude) Test(s)
- SQL: (sequel or es-kyu-el) Structured Query Language
- VAT: (vat or vee-ay-tee): Value added tax
- pronounced as a combination of names of letters and a word:
- pronounced only as the names of letters
- pronounced as the names of letters that also sound like words
- YRUU: (WHY-are-YOU-YOU?) Young Religious Unitarian Universalists
- pronounced as the names of letters but with a shortcut
- AAA: (triple-AY) American Automobile Association or Anti-Aircraft Artillery
- IEEE: (AYE-triple-EE) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- NAACP: (EN-double-AY-SEE-PEA) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- NCAA: (EN-SEE-double-AY) National Collegiate Athletic Association
- shortcut incorporated into name
- recursive acronyms, where the acronym itself is the expansion of one initial (particularly enjoyed by the open-source community)
- pseudo-acronyms, words that look like an acronym but for some reason or another are not
Trivia
The longest acronym, according to the 1965 edition of Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary, is ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC, a United States Navy term that stands for "Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command."
The world's longest initialism, according to the Guinness Book of World Records is NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT. The 56-letter initialism (54 in Cyrillic) is from the Concise Dictionary of Soviet Terminology and means "The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR."
Sometimes an acronym's official meaning is crafted to fit an acronym that actually means something that sounds less "official". For instance, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon recently developed in the United States is popularly called the "mother of all bombs" since it is the largest conventional bomb in the world; it is widely assumed that the "mother of all wars" phrase was the true inspiration for the MOAB acronym.
During the 1960s trend for action-adventure spy thrillers, it was a common practice for fictional spy organizations or their nemeses to employ names that were acronyms (or more accurately, backronyms). Sometimes these acronyms made sense but most of the time, they were words incongruously crammed together for the mere purpose of obtaining a catchy acronym, traditionally a heroic sounding one for the good guys and an appropriately menacing one for the bad guys. This has become one of the most commonly parodied clichés of the spy thriller genre. These acronyms are often spelled with periods/points/stops to make it clear that they stand for longer terms and are not simply the usual English words that they resemble, even though the punctuation would otherwise seem to indicate that the abbreviations should be pronounced as the names of the individual letters. Among the most popular:
- C.O.N.T.R.O.L. and K.A.O.S., from the Get Smart television series
- E.V.I.L. (Every Villain Is Lemons), an intentionally silly example from the Spongebob Squarepants television series.
- F.I.R.M., from the Airwolf television series
- G.U.N. (Guardian Unit of Nations), an organization from the Sonic the Hedgehog series who opposed the creation of Shadow and the Biolizard
- H.A.R.M., from the No One Lives Forever (NOLF) series of computer games, which were released in the 1990s, but were based in 1960s pop culture. What H.A.R.M actually stands for is never revealed, and speculation about its true meaning is the subject of several jokes in both games. (However, in the 1966 spy film Agent for H.A.R.M., it stands for Human Aetiological Relations Machine.)
- M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand), the mask-wearing cohort from 1980s Saturday-morning cartoon M.A.S.K.
- P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness and Normalcy) from the film Dragnet
- S.H.I.E.L.D., from the Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Marvel comics
- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), from the James Bond series
- V.E.N.O.M. (The Vicious, Evil Network of Mayhem), the evil mask-wearing cohort from 1980s Saturday-morning cartoon M.A.S.K.
- U.N.C.L.E. and T.H.R.U.S.H, from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. (The meaning of T.H.R.U.S.H. was never revealed on the series; but, in the novelizations, T.H.R.U.S.H. was stated to be "Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity".)
- W.O.O.H.P. (World Organization Of Human Protection), the fictitious organization from Totally Spies!, an animated series on Cartoon Network
See also
- -onym
- Internet slang
- Acronym Finder — searchable database of acronyms and abbreviations (over 470,000 entries)
- List of abbreviations
- List of acronyms and initialisms
- List of songs titled as acronyms or initialisms
- RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome)
- TLA (three-letter acronym/abbreviation)
- apronym
- backronym
- pseudo-acronym
- recursive acronym
- Newspeak#Abbreviations and Acronyms
- syllabic abbreviation
- Acronyms in the Philippines
External links
- AbbreviationZ — a human edited database of acronyms and abbreviations
- Acronym Finder — a human edited database of acronyms and abbreviations (over 475,000 entries)
- Special Dictionary — searchable database of acronyms and abbreviations
- Asian Pages — acronyms used by scholars of Asian studies
- No Slang — slang and acronyms translator
- [3] The Great Abbreviations & Acronyms Huntbg:Акроним
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