Acronym
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; for example, 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[1][2][3] or alphabetisms. However, acronym is popularly used to refer to either concept,[4] and both senses of the term are attributed as far back as the 1940s.[5] 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 expansion. The meaning of an acronym includes both its expansion and the meaning of its expansion.
- ^ McMahon, Mary (December 30, 2023). "What is the Difference Between an Acronym, Alphabetism, and Initialism?". LanguageHumanities.org. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
- ^ "Acronyms vs. Initialisms: What's the Difference?". Proofed.com. April 3, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "acronym". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved January 22, 2020. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on January 22, 2020. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link).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.
- ^ Zimmer, Ben; Carson, Charles E.; Solomon, Jane (2016). "Seventy-Five Years among the New Words". American Speech. 91 (4): 472–512. doi:10.1215/00031283-3870163.