reverse acronyming

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:48 AM -0500 10/31/01, Drew Danielson wrote:
>To glom onto this topic:  how about acronyms that are used as
>back-formed mnemonic devices, with an relationship in meaning between
>the 'acronym' and the phrase it 'represents'?
>
>The examples on the Bacronym page appear to be arbitrary words not
>directly related to the concept at hand (unless there is an in-group
>meaning to the acronymed words that is not apparent to an outsider).
>
>I would think that the example that Prof. Johnson presents is one of
>these.  Others (current among certain discourse communities) might
>include GOD="good orderly direction"...

Or those "G.O.D." trucks you see on the highway that proclaim
"Guaranteed Overnight Delivery" while also somehow supporting the
Deity.  My favorite historical backronym (as I usually spell it) is

SCUM = the Society for Cutting Up Men  [courtesy of Valerie Solanas,
if memory serves]

A more standard examples is WAVES (supposedly for "Women Accepted for
Volunteer Emergency Service"), formed as the counterpart to (the
forwardly acronymic) WACs

larry