You've lost me there,
Joe. Whether the initials are in the right order or not makes no difference to
fact that they are initials. With SI, they are in fact in the right order
(Syst�me Internationale).
I have several
dictionaries. Acronym is in all of them. NATO and OTAN, as pronounceable
contrived words, are both, by definition, acronyms. The Oxford American
Dictionary uses NATO as its example. Webster's uses the no-longer-current
WAC (Women's Army Corps).
The concise definition
of acronym is "a word formed from the initial letters of the words of a compound
term."
Do you,
Joe, pronounce SI as "sigh" or as "ess eye?"
Bill Potts, CMS
Roseville,
CA
http://metric1.org [SI
Navigator]
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Joseph B. Reid
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 17:34
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:25970] RE: my German friend never heard of SIBill Potts wrote in USMA 25962:Unless you're pronouncing it as a word ("sigh"), it's not an acronym. It's simply initials.(NATO and UNESCO are acronyms.)[I hope I'm not being picky, but misuse of the word acronym is one of my pet peeves.]I can't find "acronym" in my dictionaries. However "SI" is the same in all languages, whereas NATO is OTAN in French. Further, "SI" is not simply initial letters in English where it stands for "The Interrnational System of Units". If SI were simply initials it would have to be IS in English.
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