Abbreviations, Initialisms, Mnemonics and Acronyms
In a world where texting, whatsapping, and tweeting (to name but a few) are the preferred communication media of so many people, abbreviations have multiplied like there’s an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of cellphones in an infinite number of Scrabble factories pumping the things out.
While most people don’t care if they’re using an acronym or an initialism, there are differences that matter to pedants like me. So here is the long-and-short of AIMAs.
Abbreviations
This is the umbrella term for AIMs. Initialisms, Acronyms and some Mnemonics are abbreviations. (Many mnemonics aren’t, as explained below.)
Initialisms
An initialism is an abbreviation made up of the first letters of the words that make up a name or phrase. BBC, CBC, USA, EU and CRA are initialisms.
Acronyms
An acronym is an initialism that can be spoken as if it’s a word.
Examples include NASA, LASER, RADAR, SCUBA and WYSIWYG. Modern examples include LOL and ROFL.
Although I haven’t looked for evidence to back this up, personal observation shows that North Americans are sometimes reluctant to try to pronounce initialisms, whereas Brits will have a go at turning any initialism into an acronym, no matter how painful the oral gymnastics required to perform such a feat. One easy-to-pronounce example from the mainframe computer days is CICS (Brits say “Kicks”, N.Americans tended to say “see-eye-see-ess”, or in Texas, “see-aah-see-aiess” <grin>).
Of course, one side-effect of acronyms is that they encourage redundancy. Take PIN for example. If it was spelled out (“pee-eye-enn”), people wouldn’t be tempted to hang the word “number” on the end. But how many people have never said “pin number” at least once in their lives?
And where would we be if initialisms were never pronounced as words? There’s a whole sub-culture devoted to coming up with names of organizations whose initials spell out apropos words (e.g., ASH for Action on Smoking and Health) or rude words (e.g., Campaign for Real Animals in Parks) or amusing words (e.g., PICNIC – Problem In Chair Not In Computer – describes an unsophisticated computer user who might be regarded as “out to lunch” by the support team.)
Backronyms are words whose letters have been given meanings in an effort to tie the word to the topic more closely. One example cited in Wikipedia relates to the Amber Alert system of issuing warnings when children go missing. The system was named after a girl who was abducted in 1996, but the letters of amber have now been assigned the meaning “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”
There is also the concept of false acronyms, which fall into the backronym category. Examples include “posh”, a word that has been retroactively bestowed with the meaning “Port Out, Starboard Home”, and “golf”, which according to folklore was created from the words Gentleman Only, Ladies Forbidden”.
Mnemonics
A separate branch of abbreviations – and some mnemonics aren’t even abbreviations.
Mnemonics are devices that aid the memory.
“Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain” is a mnemonic used in the UK and elsewhere to help a person remember the sequence of colours in a rainbow (or the light spectrum). (How UK-centric! A quick surf using my favourite search engine (not Google…) failed to find popular and family-friendly alternatives other than the name “Roy G. Biv”.)
The Assembler programming language (BAL – Basic Assembler Language) was/is coded using mnemonics – for example, LA is the mnemonic for “Load Address”, and MVI is the mnemonic for “Move Immediate”
In math(s) circles, the mnemonic “SohCahToa” is used to remember that the sine of an angle is the opposite side’s length divided by that of the hypotenuse and so on. “SohCahToa” is also an acronym because… well, I’ll leave you to work it out. I also found another mnemonic for this – Some Old Hippie Caught Another Hippie Tripping On Acid – now that appeals to me!
Combo Plates and Summary
As you can see, acronyms are also initialisms, but not vice versa. Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, but there are other kinds of abbreviations too. At the end of the proverbial day, and in the final clichéd analysis, most people don’t really need to know if LMAO is an initialism, an acronym, or an unfortunate random placement of alphabetti spaghetti; Brits will try their hardest to pronounce “UCLA” as “Uck-lah”, and uncouth wits like me will continue to create rude acronyms just for laughs!
Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings
- Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
- Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
- Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?
If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.