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Occasionally, some letter other than the first is chosen, most often when the pronunciation of the name of the letter coincides with the pronunciation of the beginning of the word (example: BX from base exchange). from Latin exempli gratia) are sometimes more specifically called initialisms or alphabetisms. Less significant words such as in, of, and the are usually dropped ( NYT for The New York Times, DMV for Department of Motor Vehicles), but not always ( TICA for The International Cat Association, DoJ for Department of Justice).Ībbreviations formed from a string of initials and usually pronounced as individual letters (as in FBI from Federal Bureau of Investigation, and e.g. However, this is only a loose rule of thumb, as some acronyms are built in part from the first letters of morphemes (word components as in the i and d in immuno-deficiency) or using a letter from the middle or end of a word, or from only a few key words in a long phrase or name. for Professor), an acronym is-in the broad sense-formed from the first letter or first few letters of each important word in a phrase (such as AIDS, from acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome, and scuba from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). Whereas an abbreviation may be any type of shortened form, such as words with the middle omitted (for example, Rd for Road or Dr for Doctor) or the end truncated (as in Prof. Citations in English date to a 1940 translation of a novel by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger. This neoclassical compound appears to have originated in German, with attestations for the German form Akronym appearing as early as 1921. The word acronym is formed from the Greek roots acr-, meaning "height, summit, or tip" and -onym, meaning "name".
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