Initialism

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See: Acronym, Abbreviation.

References

2018

  • (Wikipedia, 2018) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Nomenclature Retrieved:2018-6-24.
    • … Although the word acronym is often used to refer to any abbreviation formed from initial letters,[1] some dictionaries and usage commentators define acronym to mean an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word, in contrast to an initialism (or alphabetism) an abbreviation formed from a string of initials (and possibly pronounced as individual letters).

      Some dictionaries include additional senses equating acronym with initialism. [2] [3] [4] The distinction, when made, hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word or as a string of individual letters. Examples in reference works that make the distinction include NATO , scuba , and radar for acronyms; and FBI , CRT , and HTML for initialisms.[5] The rest of this article uses acronym for both types of abbreviation. The distinction is not well-maintained. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage: "A number of commentators ... believe that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations in being pronounceable as words. Dictionaries, however, do not make this distinction because writers in general do not. ... Initialism, an older word than acronym, seems to be too little known to the general public to serve as the customary term standing in contrast with acronym in a narrow sense." About the use of acronym to only mean those pronounced as words, Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed.) states: "The limitations of the term being not widely known to the general public, acronym is also often applied to abbreviations that are familiar but are not pronounceable as words. ... Such terms are also called initialisms."

      A clearer distinction has also been drawn, by Pyles & Algeo (1970), who divided acronyms as a general category into word acronyms pronounced as words, and initialisms sounded out as letters.

      There is no special term for abbreviations whose pronunciation involves the combination of letter names and words or word-like pronunciations of strings of letters, such as JPEG and MS-DOS . There is also some disagreement as to what to call abbreviations that some speakers pronounce as letters and others pronounce as a word. For example, the terms URL and IRA can be pronounced as individual letters: and , respectively; or as a single word: and , respectively. The spelled-out form of an acronym or initialism (that is, what it stands for) is called its expansion.

  1. ↑ Merriam-Webster, Inc. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 1994. . pp. 21–22: (...)
  2. ↑ "acronym." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, accessed May 2, 2006: "a word (as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also: an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters: see initialism "
  3. ↑ "acronym". Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (2003), Barnes & Noble. : "1. a word created from the first letter or letters of each word in a series of words or a phrase. 2. a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately, as FBI for Federal Bureau of Investigation."
  4. ↑ "Usage Note: ... Acronyms are often distinguished from initialisms like FBI and NIH, whose individual letters are pronounced as separate syllables. While observing this distinction has some virtue in precision, it may be lost on many people, for whom the term acronym refers to both kinds of abbreviations.
  5. ↑ "acronym" Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online Oxford University Press. Accessed May 2, 2006.

2005

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