Short takes: INITIALISM

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> At 6:01 AM -0400 3/31/10, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>As the discussion about txting progressed, I began wondering about the
>>use of acronyms and initialisms /as nomenclature/. OED gives Feb 1943
>>issue of American Notes & Queries as the earliest source, Wiki pins the
>>Bell Labs as coining the term in the same year--sounds plausible, but
>>not definitive.
>>
>>But initialisms go back further. OED cites back to 1899.
>
> Not counting "O.K." and other jocular abbreviations from that period,
> as documented in detail by Allen Walker Read, I assume.  [snip]

I believe Victor was talking about the term "initialism," not the
phenomenon, as in:

1899 R. THOMAS  in N. & Q.  9th Ser. III. 103/1 In my ‘Handbook’ I
give an initialism of Mr. Watts's, ‘P. P. C. R.’


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org