Acronyms

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈæ.kɹə.nɪmz/

Definitions

1. A series of initial letters combined to represent a phrase or title
2. A shorthand made by taking the first letters of words in a phrase to create a new word or term
3. A compact form of expression created by stringing together initial characters from a sequence of words

Etymology: The word was coined in German in the early 1900s, by a scholar who needed a name for a type of abbreviation that English had no word for. German "Akronym" was built from two Ancient Greek elements: "ákron", meaning "end" or "peak", and "ónuma", meaning "name". Its model was the existing pair "Homonym" and "Synonym", which is why its ending matches them so neatly. The compound is transparent in English as well: "acro-" is a prefix meaning "beginning" or "high", and "-onym" means "name". The sense is literal. An acronym takes the first letter, or the beginning, of each word in a phrase and makes a new name from them, as in "NATO" or "radar". The Greek "ákron" looks like the English "acro-" in "acrobat", "acropolis" and "acrophobia", where it refers to the peak or height of something. The term reached English in 1940, borrowed directly from the German coinage. Its plural, "acronyms", is simply the regular English plural of that noun.

Synonyms: abbreviations, initialisms