At 16:15 16/07/2013 -0400, Felmon Davis wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jul 2013, Brian Barker wrote:
At 02:02 16/07/2013 -0400, Felmon Davis wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jul 2013, Doug wrote:
This is not an acronym. It can't be pronounced as a word. (See
dictionary definition in URL below.)
the definition says:
-----
: a word (as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial
letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts
of a compound term; [...]
-----
I'm missing the part about being pronounced as a word.
May I help? I think I can. It's right there in the second word of
the definition: it says it's a *word*, so it'll be pronounced as, er, a word!
ah, now I see where that comes from!
deviates from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym> which counts
the following formations as acronyms:
BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer
USA: The United States of America
FGM: Female Genital Mutilation
or maybe it doesn't deviate after all since they can also be
pronounced as words (any string of initials can).
Oh no: they are indeed examples of initialisms that are not
pronounced as words, so are not what I call acronyms. But to be fair
to Wikipedia, it does explain the distinction further up, but then
says it will not follow it in the rest of the article:
Although the term _acronym_ is widely used to refer to any
abbreviation formed from initial letters, some dictionaries define
_acronym_ to mean "a word" in its original sense, while some others
include additional senses attributing to _acronym_ the same meaning
as that of _initialism_. The distinction, when made, hinges on
whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, or as a string of
letters. In such cases, examples found in dictionaries include
_NATO_, _scuba_, and _radar_ for acronyms, and _FBI_ and _HTML_ for
initialisms. In the rest of this article, this distinction is not made.
I'm going to let Anne-ology make the call.
Oh, we are all entitled to speak and write as we wish, of course.
Brian Barker
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