Acronyms and pronouncability

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Dec 3, 2010, at 5:52 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Acronyms and pronouncability
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 12/2/2010 08:12 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> At 5:23 PM -0500 12/2/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>> What about the 18th century "texting" abbreviations?  Do those not
>>> count as acronyms?
>>>
>>> Joel
>>
>> Initialisms, if one makes the distinction. Is there any evidence that
>> any of them were pronounced as a word, a la "SCOTUS" (or, for
>> pre-English ones, "ICHTHYS", inspiring bumper stickers millennia
>> later).
>>
>> LH
>
> Aha!  Misled by the OED?  acronym: "A word formed from the initial
> letters of other words."  Must a "word" be pronouncable?  I see
> "initialism" does make half of the distinction: "each letter or part
> being pronounced separately (contrasted with acronym n.).  Perhaps
> the OED definition of "acronym" should add "the whole being pronounced".

indeed.  some discussion here:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/acronyms/

(with links to other postings)

further complexities (in particular, "eye initialisms", like FWIW) here:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/more-initialism-complexities/

arnold

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