[Ads-l] Candidate for IOTY (Initialism of ...) -- PLOTUS

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Jun 11 17:47:34 UTC 2015


Well, some distinctions are important to maintain.  And this one is too.  (More frequently, initialisms like "U.N." or "U.S.A." or "I.R.S." are assimilated to acronyms.)

LH

> On Jun 11, 2015, at 1:43 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:
> 
> Yes, I misunderstood "initialism".  Since it's pronounceable, I should have said "acronym".  (Although I see that in the OED sense 1. of acronym = initialism.)
> 
> More fun indeed.  
> 
> Joel
> 
>      From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2015 1:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Candidate for IOTY (Initialism of ...) -- PLOTUS
> 
> Not just initialism, I assumed, but acronym.  Otherwise, what fun is it?
> 
> LH
> 
>> On Jun 11, 2015, at 1:16 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:
>> 
>> "The poet laureate of the United States -- PLOTUS, in the lingo -- tends to be busy, Howard Nemerov once said, because he or she spends so much time explaining what the job entails."
>> "A Working-Class Voice Meant to be Spoken", Dwight Garner, "Critic's Nooteook," NYTimes, June 10, 2015, C1.  Article prompted by the nomination of Juan Felipe Herrera as the next PLOTUS.  
>> 
>> Not to be confused with Plautus.
>> 
>> Joel
>> 
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