What is an acronym?
Q: What is an acronym?
A: An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of other words, which stands for a phrase or set of words.
Q: What are some examples of acronyms?
A: Examples of acronyms are COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), LASER (Light Amplification through Stimulated Emmission of Radiation), POSH (Port out starboard home), QUANGO (Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation), RADAR (RAdio Detecting And Ranging), SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) and SNAFU (Situation Normal: All Fouled Up).
Q: How do people pronounce acronyms?
A: Acronyms usually must be able to be spoken as one word. Other abbreviations such as ASAP, USA, ECU, FBI and NBA have combinations of letters that are not pronounced as a single word; people just say the letters one after another. These three-letter acronyms and some more obscure four-letter ones such as ISDN are more often called initialisms.
Q: What does the term "acronym" mean?
A: The term "acronym" comes from the Greek acro ‘extreme’ and onymus ‘name’.
Q: Why do people use acronyms?
A: People often create a short acronym that means the same thing as a much longer phrase in order to make it faster and shorter to say than the long phrase.
