acronym
Sign in to savethumb|NASA is an acronym that expands to National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
AI overview
An acronym is a word formed by taking the first letters of a series of words, like NASA, which stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Acronyms matter because they provide a shorter, easier way to refer to long names or phrases in everyday conversation and writing.
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54 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Dispute over the scope of ''acronym''
- Dictionaries
- Style and usage guides
- Historical development and antedating
- Examples
- Historical and current use
- Early examples in English
- Current use
- Expansion at first use
- Jargon
- As mnemonics
- Acronyms as legendary etymology
- Orthographic styling
- Punctuation
- Showing the ellipsis of letters
- Ellipsis-is-understood style
- Pronunciation-dependent style and periods
- Other conventions
- Representing plurals and possessives
- Case
- All-caps style
- Normal case and anacronyms<span class="anchor" id="Anacronym"></span>
- Mixed-case variant
- Pronunciation-dependent style and case
- Numerals and constituent words
- Casing of expansions
- Changes to (or wordplay on) the expanded meaning
- Pseudo-acronyms and orphan initialisms<span class="anchor" id="Pseudo-acronyms"></span><span class="anchor" id="Orphan initialisms"></span><!--redirects to this section -->
- Redundant acronyms and RAS syndrome
- Redefined acronyms
- Backronyms
- Contrived acronyms
- Macronyms/nested acronyms
- Recursive acronyms
- Non-English languages
- Specific languages
- Chinese
- Korean
- Japanese
- German
- Hebrew
- Indonesian
- Malaysian
- Russian
- Swahili
- Vietnamese
- General grammatical considerations
- Declension
- Lenition
- See also
- Explanatory notes
- References
- External links
thumb|NASA is an acronym that expands to National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
An acronym is an abbreviation formed using the initial letters of a multi-word name or phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation.