acronym

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:23 PM +1000 5/28/06, Prof. Roland Sussex wrote:
>On acronyms, intialisms and related things:
>
>In Russian and many E. European languages under Communism there was a
>vogue for formations like kolkhoz "collective farm" from KOLlektivnoe
>XOZjajstvo. "PanAm" is in this category, also Comintern. The standard
>term was "stump compounds". "Stump" is useful, since it gets away from
>definitions of the syllable: one often takes CVC rather than CV to clip
>the first component of the compound.
>
>"Clipping" is another relevant term, but another can of worms.
>
"Clipping" doesn't work for me, given its primary use for the "math",
"bus", "za" class of simple truncations.  I like "stump", but it
can't be "stump compound", because many of them are phrases rather
than compounds.  I've used "clipronyms" as a nonce blend for
classroom reference, but I'm not crazy about it and thought there
might be a standard alternative.

Larry

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