Everyone knows what an acronym is, right? It’s a word made up of the initials of the words that it stands for, like NASA, UNESCO, CIA and scuba. What could be simpler than that?
Not so fast. Like so many things language related, things get surprisingly complicated the further into the subject you look. But before I get into why that’s so, here’s something about the word itself that may surprise you: acronym didn’t enter the English language until the 1940s.
The reason? Before the 20th century, acronyms were almost unheard of. Sure, the odd poet wrote soppy compositions that revealed their true love’s name via the first letter of each line, but that was about it. It took the age of convenience to arrive before we collectively discovered the joys of abbreviating names left, right and centre, and with it the need to develop a name for the practice.
Acronym is taken from the Greek akro- (“highest, topmost, at the extremities”) and -onym (“name”). Its emergence was hurried along by World War II when down and dirty words like fubar and snafu emerged (fucked up beyond all recognition and situation normal, all fucked up), along with naughty postal acronyms used by servicemen writing to their loved ones, such as VENICE and NORWICH (Very Excited Now I Caress Everywhere and (K)Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home). According to one account, EGYPT could mean either Ever Give You Pleasant Thoughts or Eager to Grab Your Pretty Tits, depending on the letter writer (and, presumably, the disposition of the recipient).
Official acronyms took off too, such as radar (radio detection and ranging), WAF (Women in the Air Force), MOS (Military Occupation Specialty) and ASDIC (Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee). Sadly, officialdom seemed not to share the troops’ scatological inclinations, which doomed many of their abbreviations to an equally abbreviated existence.
Right now you might be thinking that surely acronyms were a thing long before WWII, and possibly even before the 20th century. As evidence, you might point at the nautical prefix HMS, royal titles such as OBE, and the term AWOL, coined during WWI.
This, my friend, is where things start to get complicated. Strictly speaking, an acronym is not merely formed from the initials of other words but is also pronounced as a word. So radar is an acronym but HMS isn’t - you can take your pick between initialism and alphabetism for its correct name.
What about AWOL? When first coined it wasn’t pronounced ay-woll; like HMS and and OBE, its letters were enunciated one by one. It didn’t become an acronym until its pronunciation changed.
That’s the somewhat pedantic view, anyway. The thing is, though, the word initialism didn’t come into general use until the 1960s. That says to me that if you want to call HMS, CIA and their ilk acronyms, which they must surely have been called before the 60s, you should go right ahead. Furthermore, anyone who heaps scorn on you for it can go jump in the L.A.K.E.
To complicate matters further, acronyms sometimes use the initial syllables of words rather than single letters. Examples include Benelux (for Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) and Interpol (international police).
Then you’ve got your foot-in-each-camp abbreviations that are part acronym and part initialism. You’ll be familiar with many of them, such as jpeg, CD-ROM (if you’re under the age of 30, ask your great grandparents), and MS-DOS (recorded on some papyrus scrolls, I believe). Amazingly, linguists - who generally have a million names for every little curlicue of the language - are yet to coin one for these curious things.
And still the varieties of acronymous experience proliferate. Amphetamine is a mix of initial and non-initial letters from the chemical term alpha-methyl-phenethylamine. AAA, which can refer to a host of items and organisations such as a type of battery or the American Automobile Association, is usually pronounced neither aaaaah nor ay-ay-ay, but “triple A”. This may prove that humanity is not as stupid as some people would have you believe. Similarly with America’s NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) which is generally pronounced “en-double A-cee-pee”.
Some acronyms are followed, at least some of the time, with a redundant word. That ATM machine you used on the weekend to withdraw $100 so you could buy a kilo of early-season tomatoes is, to give it its full name, an automated teller machine (so it should be ATM, not ATM machine). Your PIN number is your personal identification number. The HIV virus is the human immunodeficiency virus. So maybe we humans aren’t so bright after all.
In fact, here’s another tidbit that may confirm it. Some people argue that the plural of every acronym should reflect the plural of the words from which it is derived. The plural of MP, on that basis, would be not MPs, but MsP (as in Members of Parliament). Prisoners of war would be PsOW and Weapons of Mass Destruction would be WsMD. Such people, while displaying impeccable logic, are failing dismally in the fine art of knowing when to apply that logic and when to not be an idiot.
If you’re creating a new business or inventing a new invention, received wisdom holds that you should give it a name that is YABA compatible - YABA being short for Yet Another Bloody Acronym. This is a lesson that NASA embraced many years ago. Its website lists around 250 acronyms for its various departments, officials, missions, devices hurtling through space or wandering about on foreign worlds, and other miscellaneous objects. While not all are YABA compatible, they do include such gems as ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun probes), DISCOVER-AQ (Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality) and - my personal favourite for obvious reasons - GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment).
Others to have wisely followed the YABA compatibility dictum include the producers of the German tv programme Verliebt in Berlin, who quietly dropped the originally planned name, Alles nur aus Liebe, when they realised how it would read in English when abbreviated. The Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party changed its name to the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance for a similar reason.
One institute, however, that has resolutely refused to bow to such puerile considerations is the India-based Technological Institute of Textile and Sciences. Legends.
Bits and specious
The phrase World War I wasn’t coined until 1939. Before that it was known mostly as the Great War. However, almost as soon as it began it was being referred to as a “world war” (without the numbering). For example, the Pittsburgh Press ran a headline on August 2, 1914, saying “England has Thrown Lot with France in World War”.
For more on suggestive acronyms used by WWII letter writers, check out this History Channel article.
The Valley girl accent has long been a target of satire. But it’s not all funny.
This song by Frank and Moon Zappa is though. The animated video is a recent creation from Zappa Records/UMe, released to celebrate the song’s 40th anniversary in 2022.
Quote of the week
Probably one of those sinister organisations that lurked behind the mask of amusing acronym, such as BUM, for example - the Bermondsey Union of Minstrels. Or WILLY, the Whitechapel Institution for Long-Legged Yodellers. It could be any one of a hundred such evil cabals. With the notable exception of the Meritorious Union For Friendship, Decency, Individualism, Virtue and Educational Resources, who were above reproach.
Robert Rankin, The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds
I noticed recently that some acronyms optionally include prepositions when pronounced. A nice inconsistent example is the major labor federation AF of L- CIO. For some reason C of IO didn't earn its own of.