Acronyms vs. Abbreviations

[Barnhart]

I have found that in my wandering in libraries that  professional
librarians have a rather consistent habit of calling any initialism or
acronym--ACRONYM.

For me, initialisms are made up of just the first letter of the words in a
phrase, usually not pronounced (e.g. UFT or OED or PMS; but what about
MSDOS or CD-ROM?).  An initialism that is pronounced as it seems it should
be (e.g. NATO from North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an acronym.
However, if people insist on inserting vowel sounds to make a string of
letters, otherwise unpronounceable, wordlike (e.g. HMMWV and POSSLQ and
R.C.R.A.), that becomes an acronym.  Acronyms can be made up of single
letters or groups of letter jumbled together in the order they come in the
phrase (e.g. DefCon).  However, I am not sure that they must all
necessarily be only the initial letters.

Regards,
David

barnhart at highlands.com

American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> writes:


>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject:      Re: Acronyms vs. Abbreviations
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I'm with you, Margaret.  Real sticklers might distinguish NFL, NBA, etc.
>as "initialisms."
>
>  When I learned this stuff as a young Piltdown man, an acronym was a
>pronounceable "word," and an abbreviation was not. I always
>thought that was a pretty simple rule.  Latterly, however, the
>distinction has begun to fuzz.
>
>  JL
>
>Margaret Lee <mlee303 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Margaret Lee
>Subject: Acronyms vs. Abbreviations
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Can anyone explain the _real_ difference (if there is one) between
>acronyms and abbreviations. The _Introduction to Language_ text by
>Fromkin and Rodman defines acronyms as "words derived from the
>initials of several words," with examples such as NASA and UNICEF.
>
>However, they also say that "when the string of letters cannot be
>easily prononced as a word, the acronym is produced by sounding out each
>letter," with examples such as NFL and UCLA. I always thought that
>if they could not be pronounced as words, they were just abbreviations,
>not acronyms. In other words, my thinking is, all acronyms are
>abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms. In _The American
>Heritage Dictionary_, 'USMC' , for example, is listed as the
>*abbreviation* (not acronym) for United States Marine Corps. Should/can
>the two be used interchangeably?
>Any thoughts on this?
>
>Margaret Lee
>
>
>
>
>Margaret G. Lee, Ph.D.
>Professor of English & Linguistics
>and University Editor
>Department of English
>Hampton University, Hampton, VA 23668
>757-727-5769(voice);757-727-5084(fax)
>margaret.lee at hamptonu.edu or mlee303 at yahoo.com
>
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