nomconjobjs: some factors

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 26 17:08:21 UTC 2010


I should know better, but...

For my money, "nomconjobj" is an acronym. It's formed from the initial parts
of words, like "COMINCH" (Commander in Chief) or "Sunoco" (Sun Oil Company),
and I can pronounce it, singular and plural. That's good enough for me. Give
the plural a schwa in speech if you must,  and a "e" or apostrophe in
writing ("nomconjobj's").

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_and_initialism) covers the
range and disagreements of the terminology, with many citations:

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial
components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters
(as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux). There is no universal
agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature),
nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). While popular in recent
English, such abbreviations have historical use in English as well as other
languages. As a type of word formation process, acronyms and initialisms are
viewed as a subtype of blending.

m a m

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