Re: Acronyms Et Al.

[Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de>]

"David J. Aronson" <dja2003 at hotpop.com> writes:

> Anybody got an OED?

The OED defines "initialism" as "The use of initials; a significative
group of initial letters.  Now spec. a group of initial letters used
as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being
pronounced separately (contrasted with ACRONYM)".  It references "1984
Word Ways, XVII. i. 48 The work consulted by Wolpow distinguishes
abbreviations and initialisms" -- maybe this is a good place to look
for further information.

"acronym" is "A word formed from the initial letters of other words".

But I doubt that this distinction is helpful in our field.  Quite a
few initialisms are brutally acronymed by significant numbers of
speakers ("SQL", "SCSI", "ACL", "TCAM").