ACRONYM

Acronym

An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word. These components may be individual letters or parts of words . There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of various names for such abbreviations nor on written usage . In English and most other languages, such abbreviations historically had limited use, but they became much more common in the 20th century. Acronyms are a type of word formation process, and they are viewed as a subtype of blending.

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acronym

Noun

  1. An abbreviation formed by (usually initial) letters taken from a word or series of words, that is itself pronounced as a word, such as RAM, radar, or scuba; sometimes contrasted with initialism.
  2. A pronounceable word formed from the beginnings (letter or syllable) of other words and thus representing the phrase so formed, e.g. Benelux = the countries Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg considered as a political or economic whole.
  3. Any abbreviation so formed, regardless of pronunciation, such as TNT, BBC, IBM, or XML (see usage notes).


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: acronym
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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