Q: It seems as if journalists are now calling the initials of every organization an acronym. But I always understood it to be an acronym only when the initials can be pronounced as a word.
A: It’s not just journalists. Many English speakers use the term “acronym” to mean an abbreviation with individual letters pronounced. In fact, that’s what “acronym” meant when it first appeared in English.
As it turns out, language authorities are divided today on whether an “acronym” is an abbreviation pronounced as one word or as individual letters.
Some standard dictionaries agree with you that an “acronym” is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of the words in a name or phrase and pronounced as a single word (such as “NATO” or “radar”).
However, others say the term “acronym” can also refer to an initialism—an abbreviation formed from initial letters with each letter pronounced (such as “FBI” or “CIA”).
The online Cambridge Dictionary, for example, takes the narrower view, defining “acronym” as “an abbreviation consisting of the first letters of each word in the name of something, pronounced as a word.” It has this example: “AIDS is an acronym for ‘Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.’ ”
Merriam-Webster online defines “acronym” similarly but also includes a second sense: “an abbreviation (such as FBI) formed from initial letters: INITIALISM.” In its entry for “initialism,” M-W includes this in a usage note:
“Some people feel strongly that acronym should only be used for terms like NATO, which is pronounced as a single word, and that initialism should be used if the individual letters are all pronounced distinctly, as with FBI. You can keep the distinction if you like, but our research shows that acronym is commonly used to refer to both types of abbreviations.”
Usage guides generally agree with you that “acronym” should refer to a pronounceable word. For example, Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.), edited by Jeremy Butterfield, says an “acronym” is an abbreviation “formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a single word.”
However, the word “acronym” originally referred to an initialism when it first appeared in English in the mid-20th century.
The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, says it then meant “a group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately; an initialism (such as ATM, TLS).”
The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Paris Gazette (1940), Willa and Edwin Muir’s English translation of Exil, an anti-Nazi novel in German by Lion Feuchtwanger: “Pee-gee-enn. It’s an acronym [German Akronym], that’s what it is. That’s what they call words made up of initials.”
Later Oxford citations indicate that “acronym” has been used regularly since then in the sense of an initialism. The dictionary’s latest example refers to the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “The acronym TSS—Tout Sauf Sarkozy (‘Anything But Sarkozy’).” From “Un Homme in Full,” The Atlantic, June 2008.
So when did “acronym” come to mean an abbreviation pronounced as one word?
A few years after the word first appeared in English in the sense of an initialism, the OED says, English speakers began using it to mean “a word formed from the initial letters of other words or (occasionally) from the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being pronounced as a single word.”
The dictionary’s first example for this sense is from “Initials Into Words,” by Basil Davenport (American Notes and Queries, February, 1943). Here’s an expanded version of the citation:
“Your correspondent who asks about words made up of the initial letters or syllables of other words may be interested in knowing that I have seen such words called by the name acronym, which is useful and clear to anyone who knows a little Greek.”
The term ultimately comes from the Ancient Greek combining forms ἀκρο (akro, tip, peak, or extremity) and ωνυμ (ōnym, name)—hence, a word formed from the tips, or initial letters, of other words.
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