Backronym Did You Mean Backronym?

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A backronym or bacronym is a reversed acronym. The word "backronym" is a portmanteau of back and acronym and was coined in 1983.

An acronym involves a phrase being reduced to a set of initials which can then be pronounced as a word: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation becomes NATO. A backronym is the phenomenon that the short word exists first and is then expanded to a phrase. There are both official (and generally serious), as well as unofficial (and often humorous) backronyms. When a backronym is peddled as the origin of a word, it is often an example of false etymology; when it is widely believed it may have the status of a folk etymology, but more usually it is intended and understood as a joke, in which case it would be classed as an example of fake etymology.

A pure backronym occurs when a sequence of letters is commonly understood to stand for a phrase that in fact had no role in its original conception. An example is SOS, the international distress signal that was chosen solely for its easy recognizability in Morse code, but which is often thought to stand for "save our ship", "save our souls" or something similar. An older distress signal, CQD, also has a backronym: "come quick, distress (or danger)." Another example is the word "wiki", from the Hawaiian word meaning quick. Since its application to consumer generated media, some have suggested that wiki means, "What I Know Is."

Some backronyms are back-formed by replacing one word in an acronym with another, when the original meaning is deemed obsolete or inaccurate. DVD, for example, was originally an acronym for "digital video disc"; when it was realized that a DVD could be used for non-video applications, the term "digital versatile disc" was invented (although it did not become official). 1 Another example is GSM, which originally started as an acronym for a French research group called "Groupe Spécial Mobile", but was later modified to stand for Global System for Mobile Communications. A well-known example in the United States is the SAT, which originally stood for "Scholastic Aptitude Test" but was changed to "Scholastic Assessment Test" after parent groups complained that the word "aptitude" implied that test scores reflected only innate talent and not preparation.

Other backronyms are back-formed from an existing word that was not previously an acronym. Generally these 'backronyms' are apronyms, as the word used as the 'backronym' is relevant to the expanded term it stands for. The relevance may be either serious or ironic. Most apronyms are examples of 'backronyms'. An example of this is the word acronym itself which can be A Clever Representation Of Names You Manufacture. Many jocular (and often also derogatory) apronyms are created as a form of wordplay. Example is the former name for PC Card, PCMCIA: People Cannot Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms (for Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association).

There are also false backronyms, in which letters are commonly, but inaccurately, thought to represent a phrase. An example is A.D., which stands for Anno Domini (Latin: "in the year of the Lord") and counts years since the birth of Jesus. However, many people incorrectly interpret its definition as 'After Death of Christ'. Another is R.I.P, which is actually an internationally-used acronym for Latin Requiescat in pace, not an English acronym for "Rest in Peace", as often thought, although the Latin and the English phrases have the same meaning and same initials.

Some 'backronyms' are recursive acronyms like GNU, PHP or the pseudo-acronym JINI.

External links

Backronym expansions of ACRONYM (Acronym Finder)
Citations of the word "backronym" from The Word Spy

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