Re: unix acronyms -collecting a list?

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Article #4364

#4364

From: Allen Kirby
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 00:00

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Annelise Anderson wrote:
> 
<snip>
> > Some are pronouncable, like RADAR, but it's the exception.  If what you
> > say is correct, none of the words above would be acronyms.  And they're
> > certainly not abbreviations, so what are they?
> 
> > They're acronyms.
> 
> No, they're abbreviations.  eff-bee-eye is not a word, except in some
> programming sense in which it has white space on either side of it.
> 
> The abbreviation for the United Nations is UN, pronouced you-enn;
> it's not pronounced "un" as in "undecided."  Therefore UN is an
> abbreviation, not an acronym.  tar is an acronym.
> 
> If you want to call .cshrc "c-shark", then I suppose it's half an
> acronym.... :)
> 
> Annelise

OK, an acronym IS an abbreviation, but an acronym doesn't have to be
'pronouncable' to be an acronym.  An acronym is a special kind of
abbreviation made up of the beginning letters of other words.  And a
word is defined by merriam-webster (www.m-w.com) as:

> : any segment of written or printed discourse ordinarily appearing between spaces or between a space and a punctuation mark 

Therefore FBI is an abbreviation, an acronym and a word.


-- 
---
Allen Kirby			AT&T ITS Production Services
akirby@att.com			Alpharetta, GA.

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From: Allen Kirby <akirby@att.com>
Subject: Re: unix acronyms -collecting a list?
Date: 1997/06/03
Message-ID: <33942889.59D0@att.com>
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References: <5kd2ng$c8b$1@rzsun02.rrz.uni-hamburg.de> <5l37jg$87j$1@wuff.mayn.de> <5l7jvt$q8b$10@halon.vggas.com> <33776BE4.6883@ford.com> <337C64F0.41C6@cs.ucc.ie> <5lsbv4$id8@bmtlh10.bnr.ca> <3383FA57.4855@uab.ericsson.se> <EAMxy9.EF4@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <3390a559.4210811@news.dircon.co.uk> <3392FE4F.1667@att.com> <5mvqtk$ml6$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
To: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu>
Organization: AT&T - ITS Production Services
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