An acronym is an abbreviation formed using the initial letters of a multi-word name or phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation.
In English, the word is used in two ways. In the narrow sense, an acronym is a sequence of letters (representing the initial letters of words in a phrase) when pronounced together as a single word, like NASA, NATO, or laser. In the broad sense, the term includes this kind of sequence when pronounced letter by letter (such as GDP or USA). Sources that differentiate the two often call the former acronyms and the latter initialisms or alphabetisms. However, acronym is popularly used to refer to either concept, . "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." and both senses of the term are attributed as far back as the 1940s. Dictionary and style-guide editors dispute whether the term acronym can be legitimately applied to abbreviations which are not pronounced as words, and there is no general agreement on standard acronym spacing, casing, and punctuation.
The phrase that the acronym stands for is called its . The of an acronym includes both its expansion and the meaning of its expansion.
Etymology The word acronym is formed from the Greek roots , meaning 'height, summit, or tip', and , 'name'. This neoclassical compound appears to have originated in German, with attestations for the German form appearing as early as 1921. Citations in English date to a 1940 translation of a novel by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger.
Dispute over the scope of acronym English lexicography and style guides differ on whether acronym should apply only to abbreviations pronounced as ordinary words or also to letter-by-letter initialisms. Some authorities accept or record the broader sense; others restrict acronym to word-pronounced forms and prefer initialism (or simply abbreviation) for the rest. Among sources that acknowledge the broader sense, attitudes range from neutral recording to prescriptive criticism.
Dictionaries Some mainstream English dictionaries from across the English-speaking world affirm a sense of acronym that does not require its pronunciation as a word. American English dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com's Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the British Oxford English Dictionary and the Australian Macquarie Dictionary all include a sense in their entries for acronym equating it with initialism, although The American Heritage Dictionary criticizes it with the label "usage problem". However, many English language dictionaries, such as the Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary, Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Macmillan Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, New Oxford American Dictionary, Webster's New World Dictionary, and Lexico from Oxford University Press do not acknowledge such a sense.
Style and usage guides English language usage and style guides which have entries for acronym generally criticize the usage that refers to forms that are not pronounceable words. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage says that acronym "denotes abbreviations formed from initial letters of other words and pronounced as a single word, such as NATO (as distinct from B-B-C)" but adds later "In everyday use, acronym is often applied to abbreviations that are technically initialisms, since they are pronounced as separate letters." The Chicago Manual of Style acknowledges the complexity ("Furthermore, an acronym and initialism are occasionally combined (JPEG), and the line between initialism and acronym is not always clear") but still defines the terms as mutually exclusive. Other guides outright deny any legitimacy to the usage: Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words says "Abbreviations that are not pronounced as words (IBM, ABC, NFL) are not acronyms; they are just abbreviations." Garner's Modern American Usage says "An acronym is made from the first letters or parts of a compound term. It's read or spoken as a single word, not letter by letter." The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage says "Unless pronounced as a word, an abbreviation is not an acronym."
In contrast, some style guides do support it, whether explicitly or implicitly. The 1994 edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage defends the usage on the basis of a claim that dictionaries do not make a distinction. The BuzzFeed style guide describes CBS and PBS as "acronyms ending in S".
Historical development and early usage Most of the dictionary entries and style guide recommendations regarding the term acronym in the twentieth century did not explicitly acknowledge or support the expansive sense. The Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage from 1994 is one of the earliest publications to advocate for the expansive sense,Merriam-Webster, Inc. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 1994. . pp. 21–22: and all the major dictionary editions that include a sense of acronym equating it with initialism were first published in the twenty-first century. The trend among dictionary editors appears to be towards including a sense defining acronym as initialism: the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added such a sense in its 11th edition in 2003, and both the Oxford English Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary added such senses in their 2011 editions. The 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary only included the exclusive sense for acronym and its earliest citation was from 1943. In early December 2010, Duke University researcher Stephen Goranson published a citation for acronym to the American Dialect Society e-mail discussion list which refers to PGN being pronounced "pee-gee-enn", antedating English language usage of the word to 1940. Linguist Ben Zimmer then mentioned this citation in his December 16, 2010 "On Language" column about acronyms in The New York Times Magazine. By 2011, the publication of the 3rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary added the expansive sense to its entry for acronym and included the 1940 citation. As the Oxford English Dictionary structures the senses in order of chronological development, it now gives the "initialism" sense first.
Examples
Pronounced as letters ABC: "American Broadcasting Company" BBC: "British Broadcasting Corporation" DVD: "Digital Video Disc" OEM: "original equipment manufacturer" VHF: "very high frequency" Pronounced as word; initials only NATO: "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" Scuba: "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus" Laser: "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" GIF: "graphics interchange format" Pronounced as word; initials and non-initials Amphetamine: "alpha-methyl-phenethylamine" : German ('secret state police') Radar: "radio detection and ranging" Lidar: "light detection and ranging" Pronounced as combination of word and letters CD-ROM: (cee-dee-) "compact disc read-only memory" IUPAC: (i-u- or i-u-pee-a-cee) "International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry" JPEG: (jay- or jay-pee-e-gee) "Joint Photographic Experts Group" SFMOMA: (ess-ef- or ess-ef-em-o-em-a) "San Francisco Museum of Modern Art" Pronounced as shortcut phrase of letters 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 or N A 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 spelling 3M: (three M) originally "Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company" W3C: (W-three C) "World Wide Web Consortium" A2DP: (A-two D P) "Advanced Audio Distribution Profile" I18N: ("18" stands in for the word's middle eighteen letters, "nternationalizatio") "Internationalization" C4ISTAR: (C-four Istar) "Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance" Mnemonic (memory-aid) KISS: "keep it simple, stupid", a design principle preferring simplicity SMART: "specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, time-related", a principle of setting of goals and objectives FAST: "facial drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulties, time", helps detect and enhance responsiveness to the needs of a person having a stroke DRY: "don't repeat yourself", a principle of software development aimed at reducing repetition of software patterns Multi-layered AIM: "AOL Instant Messenger", in which "AOL" originally stood for "America Online" AFTA: "ASEAN Free Trade Area", where ASEAN stands for "Association of Southeast Asian Nations" GIMP: "GNU image manipulation program" Recursive GNU: "GNU's not Unix!" Wine: "Wine is not an emulator" HURD: "HIRD of Unix-replacing daemons", where "HIRD" stands for "HURD of interfaces representing depth" Gramograms, pseudo-acronyms CQ: cee-cue for "seek you", a code used by radio operators IOU: i-o-u for "I owe you" K9: kay-nine for "canine", used to designate police units using dogs RAS syndrome phrases ATM machine: "automated teller machine machine" HIV virus: "human immunodeficiency virus virus" LCD display: "liquid-crystal display display" PIN number: "personal identification number number"
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 twentieth century than it had formerly been.
Ancient examples of acronymy (before the term "acronym" was invented) include the following: Acronyms were used in Rome before the Christian era. For example, the official name for the Roman Empire, and the Republic before it, was abbreviated as SPQR (). Inscriptions dating from antiquity, both on stone and on coins, use many abbreviations and acronyms to save space and work. For example, Roman first names, of which there was only a small set, were almost always abbreviated. Common terms were abbreviated too, such as writing just "F" for , meaning "son", a very common part of memorial inscriptions mentioning people. Grammatical markers were abbreviated or left out entirely if they could be inferred from the rest of the text. So-called ('sacred names') were used in many Greek biblical manuscripts. The common words God (), Jesus (), Christ (), and some others, would be abbreviated by their first and last letters, marked with an overline. This was just one of many kinds of conventional scribal abbreviation, used to reduce the time-consuming workload of the scribe and save on valuable writing materials. The same convention is still commonly used in the inscriptions on religious icons and the stamps used to mark the eucharistic bread in Eastern Churches. The early Christians in Rome used the image of a fish as a symbol for Jesus in part because of an acronym (or backronym): 'fish' in Greek is (), which was construed to stand for (: 'Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior'). This interpretation dates from the second and third centuries and is preserved in the catacombs of Rome. Another ancient acronym for Jesus is the inscription INRI over the crucifix, for the Latin ('Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews').