Information about Backronym

A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed "after the fact" from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. The term is sometimes used to refer to the initialism or acronym itself,^[1] but usually in those cases, it is a "replacement" backronym, the abbreviation already having an associated phrase. When the backronym phrase becomes more popular than the original, the word becomes an anacronym.^[2]

The word backronym is a neologism, coined in 1983.^[3]

An example of a backronym from the word acronym is as follows.

Acronyms Condense Representations Of Neologisms You Memorize

In this example, because the word acronym itself is not an acronym, the phrase above is a pure backronym, not a replacement backronym. Since the phrase indirectly refers to the word itself, it is also apronymic. Also, because the word acronym itself appears in its backronym, the phrase is also a recursive-backronym. If this backronym helps you remember the word acronym or backronym, then it is also a mnemonic.

Backronym versus acronym

An acronym is a pronounceable word created from the initial letters of a phrase:^[4] The word radar comes from "Radio Detection and Ranging".^[5] Letters from the originating phrase are used to construct a pronounceable word. By contrast, a backronym is constructed by starting with a word (or an initialism) and, beginning with the first letter, using each letter to form the next word of the phrase. The word then becomes an acronym or initialism of the newly formed phrase. In this sense, a backronym is the reversal of an acronym.

Since an acronym is defined as a word,^[6] and backronym is constructed from an acronym, it logically follows that the phrase must come from a word. However, this rule is commonly broken, even by dictionaries providing examples such as DVD (an initialism, see image)^[6] and SOS (a representation of the emergency signal used in Morse code).^[6]

Types

Backronyms can be classified along various types. Note that these types are not all exclusive of each other, that is, a backronym can be mnemonic, pure, and recursive. However, a backronym cannot be both pure and replacement.

Pure

A pure backronym occurs when the root word was not previously or commonly known as an acronym or abbreviation. Examples:

• The word "wiki", from the Hawaiian word meaning "quick".^[7] Since its application to consumer generated media, some have suggested that "wiki" means "What I Know Is".^[8]
  • Adidas has been written about in All Day I Dream About Sports: The Story of the Adidas Brand. Adidas is actually a portmanteau of the shoe company's founder, Adolf Dassler, whose nickname was Adi (Dassler).^[9] It has also been alternatively backronymed as "All Day I Dream About Sex".^[10]
  • Critics of the Ford Motor Company often humorously refer to Ford as being an acronym for phrases such as "Fix Or Repair Daily" or "Found On Road Dead". Ford enthusiasts, however, prefer "First On Race Day." Likewise, Honda is an acronym for "Hallmark Of Non-Descript Automobiles" and the English sports and racing automobile manufacturer Lotus as "Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious".
  • The information measurement unit byte was coined by Werner Buchholz thinking of the smallest amount of data a computer could "bite" at once, while changing the spelling for unambiguity, whereas it is sometimes referred to as saying BinarY TuplE (from n-tuple).
  • TWAIN is sometimes referred to as Technology Without An Interesting Name. It was inspired by Rudyard Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West" — "...and never the twain shall meet...", and was appropriated to reflect the relative difficulty of connecting scanners and personal computers. It was changed to the upper case form to make it more distinctive, as well as fit the style of the era computing acronyms.^[11]
    • The Java programming language has been described as "Just Another Vague Acronym".^[12]
      • Arthur Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation, suggests the backronym for the World (Welt) -- woe, suffering, misery, and death (Weh, Elend, Leid, and Tod).
      • KISS is simply the name of the band, but is often cynically referred to as "Knights In Satan's Service".^[13]
        • Perl is a programming language; its name was originally "Pearl", but was changed when its author discovered the PEARL programming language. The backronym "Practical Extraction and Report Language" has been used since the original release,^[14] but the author tongue-in-cheekly suggests the backronym "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister".^[15]
          
          
          Sometimes the backronym is so commonly heard, that it is generally but incorrectly believed to have been used in the formation of the word. Examples of these include:
          • Posh, which did not originally stand for "Port Out Starboard Home" (referring to 1st class cabins shaded from the sun on outbound voyages east, and homeward heading voyages west).^[15] The musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang popularised this erroneous etymology.^[15]
            • Golf is not an acronym for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden" as has been suggested. It is actually derived from the Scottish name for the game, gowf. This word may, in turn, be related to the Dutch word kolf, meaning "bat", or "club", and the Dutch sport of the same name.^[15]
            • SOS, the international distress signal is chosen solely for its easy recognizability in Morse code(...---...).^[17] The International Wireless Telegraph Convention makes no mention that it stands for "save our ship", "save our souls",^{[18][19][20][19][21]} or "send out succour".^[19]
              
              
              

              The Lucky Goldstar group became LG and is now branded as "Life's Good".^[22]
              
              
              

              Replacement

              Some backronyms are back-formed from an initialism or acronym that is an abbreviation with another meaning. For example,
              • IBM is the official abbreviation for "International Business Machines", but is sometimes jokingly referred to as "I've been moved", used among many IBM employees because of the frequent position changes within the company.^[23] IBM is also sometimes known as "I've been meeting".
                • SPAM luncheon meat, whose name is a portmanteau of "SPiced hAM" has been unofficially assigned acronyms such as "Specially Processed Assorted Meat", "Something Posing As Meat", "Some Parts Are Meat",^[24] "Specially Prepared American Meat", or "Spare Parts After Mutilation". After the word "spam" became associated with unsolicited commercial email (UCE), it became jokingly referred to as "Self-Propelled Automated Mailings" or "Stupid, Pointless, Annoying Messages". In Esperanto the word spamo is used with the same meaning and has been reinterpreted as "SenPete Alsendita Mesaĝo", that is, "message sent to someone without being asked for".
                  • PCMCIA stands for "Personal Computer Memory Card International Association." It has also been jokingly referred to as "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms."^[25]
                    • MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's acronym, is sometimes jokingly said to stand for "Made in Taiwan," referring to the large number of Asian students at the Institute.
                    • The name Epcot derives from the acronym EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). Disney employees have changed it to mean (Every Paycheck Comes On Thursday).
                    • NASA the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has, due to several tragic incidents (and the capacity of people in a Space Shuttle crew), been said to mean "Need Another Seven Astronauts," in addition to the "National Acronym-Slinging Agency."
                    • The .arpa Top-level domain originally stood for "Advanced Research Projects Agency" but as the internet transitioned from a strictly US government project to an independent computer network this TLD was instead officially declared to stand for "Address and Routing Parameter Area".
                    • The name of the Italian automobile manufacturer Fiat officially stands for "Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino" (i.e. Italian Automobile Factory of Turin), but is often humourously expanded as "Fix It Again, Toni" by those who perceive the company's products to be generally unreliable.

                    Apronym

                    Many backronyms are apronyms, that is, the word itself is relevant to its associated phrase.^[26] The relevance may be either serious or ironic. Many jocular (and often also derogatory) apronyms are created as a form of wordplay. Examples of this certainly include those of the self-referential variety:
                    • TLA: Three-Letter Acronym. Not actually an acronym since it is not pronounced as such. However, a suitable replacement backronym is Three-Letter Abbreviation.
                    • TLB: Twenty-five Letter Backronym
                    In fact, most of the examples cited in the following sections would also count as apronyms.
                    
                    

                    Mnemonic

                    Backronyms are typically constructed for educational purposes, to form mnemonics so that the word or initialism is easier to remember. For instance, when learning to read sheet music, students often learn

                    Every Good Boy Does Fine (US), Every Good Boy Deserves Fun (US), Every Good Boy Deserves (Favour|Fruit|Fudge|Football|Fun) (UK/Canada) or Every Green Bus Drives Fast (UK)

                    to help remember that these notes (E, G, B, D, and F) are "on the lines". Another example, also applied in music, is FACE, referring to the "space" notes F, A, C, E. Another example is Go Down And Eat Breakfast|Banana and Fat Boys Eat All Day for the names of the major keys. G Major has one sharp as its key signature; D Major has two, and so on. The order of Sharps in those keys is also recalled via "Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle". F Major has one flat as its key signature, B-flat major has two, etc. This also works in reverse for the order of flats: "Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father". In Finland, there is the backronym "Esko Aho Diggaa Golfista, Halonen Ei" (Esko Aho digs golf, Halonen doesn't) to help children remember the strings of a guitar in order (E, A, D, G, H/B, E). In Dutch, the corresponding backronym is "Een Aap Die Geen Bananen Eet" (A monkey that does not eat bananas). The US version is "Elvis Ate Dynamite Good Bye Elvis".
                    
                    Another example is the Apgar score, used to assess the health of newborn children. The rating system is named after Virginia Apgar, but ten years after the initial publication, the acronym APGAR was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: Appearance (skin color), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflex irritability), Activity (muscle tone), and Respiration.
                    
                    
                    

                    DVD is an example of an anacronymed backronym. What started as Digital Video Disc was later changed to Digital Versatile Disc^[6]
                    
                    
                    In star classification the backronym Oh, Be A Fine Girl/Guy Kiss Me, and a number of variations, are used to remember the order of star classes, from bluest to reddest.

                    Anacronym

                    Some backronyms are replacements of other phrases that have become obsolete, either for technological, political or marketing reasons. The result is an anacronym. For example,
                    • ESV, originally, in 1970, Experimental Safety Vehicle. Since 1991, Enhanced Safety of Vehicles.^[28]
                      • RAID, originally meant "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks", and now usually "Redundant Array of Independent Disks". This arose as RAID was originally a way to expand the linear capacity of unreliable commodity hard disk devices while providing extra reliability. Now that the hard disk is standard, "independent" is more appropriate.^[29]
                        • SAT in the US originally meant Scholastic Achievement Test. In 1941, the College Board changed its name to Scholastic Aptitude Test (whereas "achievement" suggests what a student has accomplished, "aptitude" suggests a student's potential). In 1990, the name was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test, and finally in 1994, the initials were officially declared to stand for nothing at all^[30]. (To add to the confusion, SAT in the UK still stands for Standard Attainment Test, the examination part of National Curriculum assessments carried out at the ages of 7, 11 and 14.)^[31]
                        • DVDs were originally designed as media for audio-visual data, and as such the abbreviation originally stood for "Digital Video Disc", whether or not the medium could carry any data. As the format inevitably came into common use for other data storage, a different semi-official expansion was created, namely "Digital Versatile Disc". However, "DVD" officially does not stand for anything.^[6]
                        • SOAP was originally the acronym for Simple Object Access Protocol. An informal vote for a replacement anacronym took place at a W3C XML Working Group meeting. Candidates included Service Oriented Access Protocol and Simple Open Access Protocol, but "SOAP" without definition was officially adopted.^[32]
                          • GSM, originally from the French "Groupe Spécial Mobile", became Global System for Mobile Communications when the GSM mobile network became increasingly popular around the world. ^[33]

                          False

                          While not necessarily a type, many backronyms are falsely believed to come from an acronym or initialism that means something else. Unlike anacronyms, these original meanings still hold. Examples include:
                          • B.C.E. and C.E., which stand for "Before the Common Era" and "of the Common Era", and correspond to the same reference system as do B.C. and A.D. respectively, were created as a religion-neutral alternative to specify the year. Also, C.E. takes account of chronological errors, that put the birth of Christ in 4 B.C.E., which would technically be year 1 A.D. People familiar with the meanings of B.C./A.D. sometimes mistake the new initialisms as modern translations of the original initialisms, such as in "the year 570 of the Christian Era."^[34]
                          • R.I.P., an internationally used initialism for the Latin Requiescat in pace ("May he/she rest in peace").^[35] is not, as often stated, an English acronym for "Rest in Peace".
                            • RPG is a transliteration of РПГ, the Russian abbreviation of реактивный противотанковый гранатомёт (reaktivniy protivotankoviy granatomyot), "rocket anti-tank launcher", now sometimes said to stand for "rocket-propelled grenade" instead.^[36] (RPG has also recently come to be used for role-playing game.)
                              • RSVP does not stand for "Respond to Sender Via Post" or "Respond So Very Promptly" but for the French "Répondez, s'il vous plaît," which literally translates to "Respond, if you please" or simply "Please reply."^[37]
                                • AC/DC does not stand for "Anti-Christ/Devil's Children".^[38] nor for "After Christ, the Devil Comes". It actually stands for the electrical terms, "Alternating Current" and "Direct Current". The founders of the hard rock band, AC/DC, (Angus and Malcolm Young) saw the letters on the back of a sewing machine,^[38] and thought that a reference to electricity suited their energetic style. The name caused some confusion among Americans because AC/DC was a common euphemism for bisexuality.^[39]
                                  
                                  

                                  Recursive

                                  Some backronyms are formed recursively. Perhaps the most famous of these is GNU, the open source software project, which stands for GNU's Not Unix.^[40] Later software projects also adopted recursive names, including:
                                  • PINE — PINE Is Nearly Elm or PINE Is Not Elm, referring to the e-mail program Elm (an acronym for "ELectronic Mail").^[41] Note, however, that PINE now officially stands for "Program for Internet News & E-mail".
                                    • LAME — LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder.^[42]
                                      • WINE — WINE Is Not an Emulator.^[43]
                                        • PHP — PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.^[44]
                                          • MUNG - Mung until no good. ^[45]
                                          Possibly the earliest example of a recursive backronym comes from Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in which a genie explains to Achilles that GOD stands for GOD Over Djinn, remarking that "GOD can never be fully expanded." In the German translation it is rendered as "ZEUS ewig ueber Dschinn", meaning "Zeus eternally over Djinn".

                                          See also

                                          • Retronym
                                          • Recursive acronym

                                          External links

                                          • Backronym expansions of ACRONYM (Acronym Finder)
                                          • World Wide Words is not specifically about backronyms, but several false examples are discussed among its articles.

                                          References

                                          1. ^ Backronym definition. Encarta. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
                                          2. ^ But other than that, backronyms and anacronyms have little to do with each other.
                                          3. ^ bacronym. Word Spy. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
                                          4. ^
                                          
                                          
                                          5. ^ RADAR means: Radio Detection and Ranging. Nasa Explores. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
                                          6. ^ Acronym. WhatIs.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
                                          7. ^
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        8. ^
                                        9. ^ All Day I Dream About Sport: The Story of the Adidas Brand, ISBN 1904879128
                                        10. ^
                                        11. ^
                                      
                                      12. ^
                                    
                                    13. ^ Or as in Keep it Simple Stupid when making things more complicated then they should. The KISS method
                                  Brothers, Fletcher A. in "The Rock Report", 1987 cites a January 1980 American Photographer
                                  14. ^
                                
                                
                                
                                15. ^
                                16. ^
                              Quinion, Michael (2005). Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-101223-4. ; published in the US as Quinion, Michael (2006). Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-085153-8. 
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                            Turnball, G. E. (1913). Distress Signalling, 318-322. Retrieved on 2007-03-17. 
                            18. ^
                            19. ^
                            20. ^
                            
                            
                            21. ^
                            
                            
                            22. ^ Samsung, LG’s Brand Globalization History. Korean Times (2005-12-26). Retrieved on 2007-03-15.
                            23. ^
                          
                          
                          
                          24. ^
                        
                        25. ^
                      
                      26. ^
                      27. ^
                      
                      
                      28. ^
                    
                    29. ^
                  
                  30. ^
                  31. ^ "The Standards Site", DfES
                  32. ^
                
                33. ^ "Brief History of GSM & the GSMA"
                34. ^ Ahmed Deedat, Muhummed, The Natural Successor to Christ, , date unknown.
                35. ^
              
              
              
              36. ^
            
            
            
            37. ^
          
          38. ^
        
        
        
        39. ^ Discovery Health :: Bisexual Behavior. Retrieved on 2007-09-09.
        40. ^
        41. ^
      What Pine Really Stands For. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
      42. ^
    
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45. ^