Acronym
An acronym is a word whose letters are the first letters of other words. People often create a short acronym that means the same thing as a much longer phrase (set of words). This is faster and shorter to say than the long phrase.
Examples of acronyms are:
- COBOL - COmmon Business Oriented Language
- LASER - Light Amplification through Stimulated Emmission of Radiation
- QUANGO - Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation
- RADAR - RAdio Detecting And Ranging
- SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- SCUBA - Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
- SNAFU - Situation Normal: All Fouled Up
An acronym usually must be able to be spoken as word. Other abbreviations such as ASAP[1] (as soon as possible), USA[2] (the United States of America), ECU[3] (European Currency Unit), FBI[4] (Federal Bureau of Investigation), NBA[5] (National Basketball Association) have combinations of letters that are not pronounced as a single word. People just say the letters, one after another.
These three-letter acronyms,[6] and some more obscure four-letter ones such as ISDN are more often called initialisms.
The word "acronym" comes from the Greek acro ‘extreme’ and onymus ‘name’.
Extremes
The world's longest acronym, according to the Guinness Book of World Records is NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT (Russian: Нииомтплабопармбетжелбетрабсбомонимонконотдтехстромонт). It is 56 letters long (54 in Cyrillic). It 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 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."[7][8]
Acronym Media
"NYPD", an acronym for "New York Police Department", used on the side of a police car
Related pages
References
- ↑ "Asap definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
- ↑ "USA definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
- ↑ "ECU definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
- ↑ "FBI definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
- ↑ "NBA definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
- ↑ "Merriam Webster Dictionary online".
- ↑ "THE WORLD'S LONGEST ABBREVIATION". Archived from the original on 2013-05-30. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
- ↑ Brandreth, Gyles (2019-08-13). Have You Eaten Grandma?: Or, the Life-Saving Importance of Correct Punctuation, Grammar, and Good English. Simon and Schuster. p. 205. ISBN 978-1-9821-2740-4.
Other websites
- Acronyms at the Open Directory Project
- Acronym Finder - an acronym website with many ways to search for acronyms.
- All Acronyms - a website with many acronyms