Other forms: acronyms
An acronym is a word built from first letters. A useful acronym, an acronym for the department, spell out the acronym.
Strictly it must be said as a word: NASA is an acronym and BBC is an initialism, though almost nobody keeps the distinction. Some acronyms have swallowed their origins entirely — laser, radar and scuba were all initials once.
1nounacronymA word built from first letters, like NASA.
“The acronym UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.”
acronym is a word.
German Akronym, from Greek akron, a tip or end, plus onyma, a name, on the model of synonym.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eḱ-
German
Akronym
English, today
acronym
Built from
Borrowed from German Akronym. German Akronym (from Ancient Greek ἄκρον (“end; peak”) + ὄνυμα (“name”)), modelled after Homonym and Synonym, first attested in German in the early 1900s and in English in 1940. by surface analysis, acro- + -onym
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA