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What is your least favourite acronym?
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Just to be “that guy” I wanted to say that an acronym is technically an initialism that you pronounce as a word, like SCUBA, LASER, or NASA. If it’s just letters that stand for something, it’s called an initialism. No one cares (not even me), but I had to say it :P
Most acronyms that have a W in them are pointless to say aloud in English. It’s almost always shorter to just say the words. Like WTF, for example. Those are my least favorite
Oh and YMMV. I used to work with car data and we would use YMMB to mean “year/make/model/body” and so I always start reading YMMV wrong and that bugs me
I care, but mostly because it's fun. Just like apparently there's no such thing as a fish, and that fruits are vegetables...
I thought vegetables weren’t a botanical classification?
Initialisms are a type of acronym. All initialisms are acronyms but not all acronyms are initialisms.
Other way around.
No
Hmm, okay, it's apparently debated. However, the only way I've learned it is that initialisms are words formed from initial letters of included words, and acronyms are initialisms pronounced as words. It seems like it varies by country as well.
I think it makes logical sense that acronyms are initialisms, since initialism just implies that it's formed from the initials, thus all abbreviations formed from the initials of the words are initialisms, while a subset of those can be pronounced as a word and thus can be called acronyms. Personally I think it's very important that things are named such that one can logically deduce their origin and meaning.
Today I learned that laser is an acronym. "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"
Radar and sonar are both acronyms as well.