acronym

(ăk'rə-nĭm')
n.
A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.

[ACR(O)- + -ONYM.]

acronymic ac'ro·nym'ic or a·cron'y·mous (ə-krŏn'ə-məs) adj.

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1. This term, which was first used in the 1940s, denotes a type of abbreviation made up of a set of initials that are pronounced as a single word, as Nato is (as distinct from BBC). An acronym is generally treated as a word in its own right in other ways, for example in the formation of plurals when appropriate. Examples of familiar acronyms include: Aids (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), PIN (personal identification number), SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), and WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Some of these, especially the names of organizations, start off as ordinary abbreviations (often with full stops) and develop into acronyms; others (e.g. ASH) are deliberately contrived so as to lend themselves to pronunciation as words and hence acquire acronym status artificially.

2. Examples of acronyms that form ordinary nouns are laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), radar (radio detection and ranging), and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats: used in business assessments).

3. In everyday use, acronym is sometimes applied to abbreviations that are properly initialisms, since they are pronounced as separate letters (e.g. EU = European Union, DVD = digital versatile disc).

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A word typically made up of the first letters of two or more words; for example, BASIC stands for "Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code." Letters within a word are also used; for example, XML means "eXtensible Markup Language."

Technically, if only first letters are used, the term is an "initialism," but this distinction is not widely made. For an excellent acronym resource, visit www.acronymfinder.com. See backronym.

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Word or name that is formed by joining the first letters (or the first few letters) of a series of words. For example, DOS is the acronym for D isk O perating S ystem. An acronym is pronounceable, whereas many other abbreviations are not.

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Origin: 1943

As wartime production of names using initials reached an all-time high, it was high time to give a name to the growing arsenal of alphabetic abbreviations. That need was met in a note in the February 1943 issue of American Notes and Queries: "Your correspondent who asks about words made up of the initial letters or syllables of other words may be interested in knowing that I have seen such words called by the name acronym, which is useful, and clear to anyone who knows a little Greek."

Greek? Yes, acronym follows the model of other designations for types of words, like synonym, antonym, and homonym. The -nym means "a kind of word"; acro- means "top, peak, or initial," as in acrobat or acrophobia. Sometimes scholars distinguish between initialisms, which are simply a series of letters pronounced one after the other, like USA (1795 as "United States of America," 1848 as "U.S. Army"), GOP (Grand Old Party, 1883), IQ (1916), and GI (1917), and hard-core acronyms, which are initials pronounced as a separate word, like WAC (a member of the Women's Army Corps, 1943), Snafu (1944), and radar (radio detection and ranging, 1941). In general use, however, these are all called acronyms.

And what were the acronyms so busily produced during World War II? Initialisms ranged from PX (post exchange, 1941) to V.D. (venereal disease, 1942) and included the names of numerous agencies such as OPA (Office of Price Administration), OSS (Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the present CIA or Central Intelligence Agency), and WPB (War Production Board). Acronyms pronounced as words included CARE (Cooperative for American Relief in Europe, 1945) at war's end, and after the war NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1949). Soon after the establishment of the U.N. (United Nations fighting the Axis, 1942) a plethora of acronyms, some of the quite long, blossomed. Two of the longer ones are UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 1945) and UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, 1943).

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(ak-ruh-nim)

A word formed by combining the beginning letters of a name or phrase, as in WASP for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or by combining the initial syllables of a series of words, as in radar, which stands for radio detecting and ranging.

Acronyms are often less clumsy than the complete expressions they represent and are easier to write and remember.

IN BRIEF: A word that is made from the first letters or syllables of two or more words.

"NASA" is an acronym for the space agency.

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

For a list of words related to acronym, see:

• Linguistics and Writing Systems - acronym: word formed from initial letters of set series of words

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See words rhyming with "acronym."

Dansk (Danish)
n. - akronym, kortord

Nederlands (Dutch)
acroniem

Français (French)
n. - acronyme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Akronym, Initialwort, Kurzwort, (aus den Initialien anderer Wörter)

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αρκτικόλεξο

Italiano (Italian)
acronimo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - acrônimo (m)

Русский (Russian)
акроним

Español (Spanish)
n. - acrónimo, sigla

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - akronym

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
只取首字母的缩写词, 缩写字

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 只取首字母的縮寫詞, 縮寫字

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 첫 글자를 맞추어 만들 말

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 頭字語, アクロスティック
v. - 頭字語化する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) كلمه مركبه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מילה הבנויה מראשי-תיבות (למשל: מטכ"ל)‬

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