Pseudo-acronym

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A pseudo-acronym (or empty acronym[1]) is an apparent acronym or other abbreviation which doesn't stand for anything, or cannot be officially expanded to some meaning. An orphan acronym is a pseudo-acronym that was once a true acronym or initialism. For instance:

  • The SAS System, which originally stood for the Statistical Analysis System programming language, has now outgrown its acronym and officially stands for nothing.
  • The EFFIE is an advertising award that appears to be an acronym, but it comes from the word "effectiveness", which is a good measure of an advertisement.
  • UNISON, Britain's largest trade union, looks like an acronym, particularly since the names of many British trade unions are acronyms, but it is not.
  • The ISO, a world-wide standards organization, is formally named the "International Organization for Standardization" in English and "Organisation internationale de normalisation" in French.
  • NASDAQ was originally an acronym for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, but is now a proper noun.

Not pseudo-acronyms (since they are not pronounced as words) but pseudo-initialisms:

  • The Black Sabbath song "N.I.B." is merely the word "nib" spelled as an acronym. [2]
  • Similarly, the song title "A.M.E.R.I.K.A." by KillRadio is typographic rather than acronymic.
  • The Cream song SWLABR is alleged to stand for She Was Like a Bearded Rainbow, but probably not.
  • The SAT was an acronym for Scholastic Aptitude Test, Scholastic Assessment Test, or Scholastic Achievement Test at various times but now officially stands for nothing in particular.
  • The instant messaging system called ICQ was chosen as a play on the words "I Seek You".
  • After DVD's original expansion – "Digital Video Disc" – became inadequate, the DVD Forum decreed in 1999 that DVD stands for nothing at all and is simply three letters [3], thus making it a pseudo-acronym. (It is however commonly but unofficially retrofitted to the backronym "Digital Versatile Disc".)

An anti-acronym is an acronym or other abbreviation which officially stands for something, but pretends not to, such as phrases which paradoxically deny their own existence. (This is very common among computer programs, especially UNIX programs.) For instance:

  • Eine and Zwei were two MIT Lisp Machine Emacs-like editors from the late 1970s, standing for "Eine Is Not Emacs" and "Zwei Was Eine Initially" (also suggestive of the German first two ordinals "eins" and "zwei" (versions one and two)).
  • JINI is said to stand for "Jini Is Not Initials".
  • LAME, an mp3 encoder, stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder".
  • GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix" .
  • Ging stands for "Ging is not Ging" [4].

Because these are also recursive acronyms – ones where part of the acronym expands to the original acronym – and can thus never be fully expanded, some prefer to refer to recursive acronyms as pseudo-acronyms instead of anti-acronyms.

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