Acronym
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.
[24] 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.
Ancient examples of acronymy (before the term "acronym" was invented) include the following: During the mid- to late nineteenth century, acronyms became a trend among American and European businessmen: abbreviating corporation names, such as on the sides of railroad cars (e.g., "Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad" → "RF&P"); on the sides of barrels and crates; and on ticker tape and newspaper stock listings (e.g. American Telephone and Telegraph Company → AT&T).
[41] Some acrostics pre-date this, however, such as the Restoration witticism arranging the names of some members of Charles II's Committee for Foreign Affairs to produce the "CABAL" ministry.
To fit messages into the 160-character SMS limit, and to save time, acronyms such as "GF" ("girlfriend"), "LOL" ("laughing out loud"), and "DL" ("download" or "down low") have become popular.
In this view, the modern practice is just the "proper" English of the current generation of speakers, much like the earlier abbreviation of corporation names on ticker tape or newspapers.
[46] Acronyms are often taught as mnemonic devices: for example the colors of the rainbow are ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet).
[48] With some of these specious expansions, the "belief" that the etymology is acronymic has clearly been tongue-in-cheek among many citers, as with "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden" for "golf", although many other (more credulous) people have uncritically taken it for fact.
[48][49] Taboo words in particular commonly have such false etymologies: "shit" from "ship/store high in transit"[39][38] or "special high-intensity training" and "fuck" from "for unlawful carnal knowledge", or "fornication under consent/command of the king".
Larry Trask, American author of The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, states categorically that, in British English, "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete.
[citation needed] In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the acronym is used to indicate plural words: for example, the Spanish EE.UU., for Estados Unidos ('United States').
Pseudo-acronyms also frequently develop as "orphan initialisms": an existing acronym is redefined as a non-acronymous name, severing its link to its previous meaning.
Genzyme Transgenics Corporation became GTC Biotherapeutics, Inc.; The Learning Channel became TLC; MTV dropped the name Music Television out of its brand; and American District Telegraph became simply known as ADT.
Acronyms are sometimes contrived, that is, deliberately designed to be especially apt for the thing being named (by having a dual meaning or by borrowing the positive connotations of an existing word).
The short-form names of clinical trials and other scientific studies constitute a large class of acronyms that includes many contrived examples, as well as many with a partial rather than complete correspondence of letters to expansion components.
[85] At least one study has evaluated the citation impact and other traits of acronym-named trials compared with others,[86] finding both good aspects (mnemonic help, name recall) and potential flaws (connotatively driven bias).
[89] Fully expanded, "RARS" might thus become "Regional Advanced Television Infrared Observational Satellite Operational Vertical Sounder Retransmission Service", which would produce the much more unwieldy acronym "RATIOSOVSRS".
The latter are fully reducible in an attempt to "spell everything out and avoid all abbreviations", but the former are irreducible in that respect; they can be annotated with parenthetical explanations, but they cannot be eliminated from speech or writing in any useful or practical way.
There are also cases where some longer phrases are abbreviated drastically, especially in Chinese politics, where proper nouns were initially translated from Soviet Leninist terms.
Many aspects of academics in Korea follow similar acronym patterns as Chinese, owing to the two languages' commonalities, like using the word for 'big' or 'great' i.e. dae (대), to refer to universities (대학; daehak, literally 'great learning' although 'big school' is an acceptable alternate).
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (한국과학기술원, Hanguk Gwahak Gisulwon) is referred to as KAIST (카이스트, Kaiseuteu) in both English and Korean.
Chinese-based words (Sino-Japanese vocabulary) uses similar acronym formation to Chinese, like Tōdai (東大) for Tōkyō Daigaku (東京大学, Tokyo University).
Examples of Aküfi include Vokuhila (for vorne kurz, hinten lang, 'short in the front, long in the back', i.e., a mullet haircut) and the mocking of Adolf Hitler's title as Gröfaz (Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten, 'Greatest General of all Time').
Examples (keep in mind Hebrew reads right-to-left): ארה״ב (for ארצות הברית, the United States); ברה״מ (for ברית המועצות, the Soviet Union); ראשל״צ (for ראשון לציון, Rishon LeZion); ביה״ס (for בית הספר, the school).
[91] Acronyms that use parts of words (not necessarily syllables) are commonplace in Russian as well, e.g. Газпром (Gazprom), for Газовая промышленность (Gazovaya promyshlennost, 'gas industry').
Historically, OTMA was an acronym sometimes used by the daughters of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and his consort, Alexandra Feodorovna, as a group nickname for themselves, built from the first letter of each girl's name in the order of their births: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.
Examples include TP.HCM (Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, 'Ho Chi Minh City'), THPT (trung học phổ thông, 'high school'), CLB (câu lạc bộ, 'club'), CSDL (cơ sở dữ liệu, 'database'), NXB (nhà xuất bản, 'publisher'), ÔBACE (ông bà anh chị em, a general form of address), and CTTĐVN (các Thánh tử đạo Việt Nam, 'Vietnamese Martyrs').
The letter Ư is often replaced by W in initialisms to avoid confusion with U, for example UBTWMTTQVN or UBTƯMTTQVN for Ủy ban Trung ương Mặt trận Tổ quốc Việt Nam ('Central Committee of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front').
In languages such as Scottish Gaelic and Irish, where lenition (initial consonant mutation) is commonplace, acronyms must also be modified in situations where case and context dictate it.
Dictionaries, however, do not make this distinction because writers in general do not: "The powder metallurgy industry has officially adopted the acronym 'P/M Parts'"—Precision Metal Molding, January 1966.
