initialism

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ASOs (my initialism, not his) are objects that are not directly related to your product or service but are close.

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Definitions (1)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun An abbreviation consisting of the first letter or letters of words in a phrase (for example, IRS for Internal Revenue Service), syllables or components of a word (TNT for trinitrotoluene), or a combination of words and syllables (ESP for extrasensory perception) and pronounced by spelling out the letters one by one rather than as a solid word.

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Examples (19)

  • As with any such initialism, we should try to limit its use in articles by referring instead to the bureau or the agency.
  • But, for the record, here's how some of the most professional publications deal with long organization names, etc., and their initials as abbreviations:* If the initialism is already known to the reader, use away: CIA, FBI.
  • * If a quotation contains an initialism, well, you can't change that (at least, not without making it worse with those god-awful brackets).
  • When Nadine Strossen was the president of the ACLU (an initialism, not an acronym—she said it stood for "All Criminals Love Us"), she floated in front of her board the idea that they could take the position that censorship of pornography is discrimination against the ugly. —  Sock
  • But wait: doesn't the Ministry of Education operate China Educational TV, which goes by the English-language initialism CETV? —  Chinalyst - China blogs in English
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