Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.
Wiktionary
- n. 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.
- n. 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.
- n. Any abbreviation so formed, regardless of pronunciation, such as TNT, IBM, or XML.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a word formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name
Etymologies
- acr(o)- + -onym.
Examples
“In the book it states the letters in the title acronym stand for the four main components of productive meetings.”
“The group, whose acronym is Spanish for "enough," said if the council members don't step down by Monday's council meeting, it will begin working for their recall.”
“The term acronym, although said to have originated some time in the 1940s, took time to achieve dictionary recognition.”
“In the context of your story, the acronym is a noun, so it might look weird if you had to write a sentence like this: When the supervillains escaped, the President knew he had to call SURLY.”
“This acronym is the standard one, appearing as it does in the fanboy magazine Locus.”
“In my posting on almost-recursive acronyms, I noted that the company Cygnus, whose name expands to “Cygnus, Your GNU Support,” was not guilty of what I referred to as acronym stacking.”
“The acronym is a total, unmitigated disaster for anyone entering this space ….”
“Actually, if you include every word, the acronym is TARARA.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘acronym’.
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G[r]eek
A collection of words found in English that are either purely Greek or have Greek etymology.
Please add with caution and certainty. Will be regularly updated by me.etymology, philosophy, laconic, disharmony, patriarchic, archaic, phlogiston, aether, aeon, angel, arachnid, rhythm and 322 more...
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Word Words
This used to be my nym list, but there are so many words about words, I think it's time to expand and open.
acronym, antonym, aptronym, autoantonym, autonym, bacronym, capitonym, contranym, contronym, eponym, exonym, heteronym and 120 more...
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-onym, -onymous, -onymic
denoting or relating to names
acronym, synonymous, patronymic, antonym, ananym, anonym, aptronym, autonym, caconym, cohyponym, cryptonym, dionym and 29 more...
hallettj My worst pet peeve when it comes to language is the use of the word acronym. I often hear it used to describe any kind of abbreviation - when its original usage actually refers to an abbreviation that itself is pronounced as a word.
I realize that some of the dictionary definitions linked here give both definitions; and I grant that acronym is an awesome word, so I can understand why people would want to use it more often. But it makes me sad to hear the meaningful distinction between these two words disappear. Dec 9, 2006