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acronym

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thumb|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.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Subclass of
derivation
Said to be same as
initialism
Show 8 more facts
Commons category
Acronyms
partially coincident with
initialism
topic's main category
Category:Acronyms
opposite of
initialism
different from
contamination
contributing factor of
derivation
P13411
athletics
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Encyclopedic overview

54 sections
Contents
  • 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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “acronym” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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