RAS syndrome

[1][2][3] A person is said to "suffer" from RAS syndrome when they redundantly use one or more of the words that make up an acronym or initialism with the abbreviation itself.

Usage commentators consider such redundant acronyms poor style that is best avoided in writing, especially in a formal context, though they are common in speech.

'OPEC countries', 'SALT talks' and 'HIV virus' are all technically redundant because the second word is already contained in the preceding abbreviation, but only the ultra-finicky would deplore them.

The redundancy may help the listener by providing context and decreasing the "alphabet soup quotient" (the cryptic overabundance of abbreviations and acronyms) of the communication.

The tautology is not parsed by the mind in most instances of real-world use (in many cases because the foreign word's meaning is not known anyway; in others simply because the usage is idiomatic).