acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of
false etymology
A false etymology (fake etymology, popular etymology, etymythology, pseudo-etymology, or par(a)etymology) is a popular but false belief about the origin or derivation of a specific word. It is sometimes called a folk etymology, but this is also a ...
portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words
An acronym is a word derived from the initial letters of the words of a phrase, such as ''
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, Marine radar, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor v ...
'' from "''ra''dio ''d''etection ''a''nd ''r''anging". By contrast, a backronym is "an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words, either to create a memorable name or as a fanciful explanation of a word's origin." Many fictional espionage organizations are backronyms, such as
SPECTRE
Spectre, specter or the spectre may refer to:
Religion and spirituality
* Vision (spirituality)
* Apparitional experience
* Ghost
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Spectre'' (1977 film), a made-for-television film produced and wri ...
(''sp''ecial ''e''xecutive for ''c''ounterintelligence, ''t''errorism, ''r''evenge and ''e''xtortion) from the
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...
franchise.
For example, the Amber Alert missing-child program was named after
Amber Hagerman
An Amber Alert (alternatively styled AMBER alert) or a child abduction emergency alert ( SAME code: CAE) is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children. The system originated i ...
, a nine-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 1996. Officials later publicized the backronym "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response".
Examples
An example of a backronym as a
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and image ...
is the Apgar score, used to assess the health of newborn babies. The rating system was devised by and named after Virginia Apgar. Ten years after the initial publication, the backronym ''APGAR'' was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration.
Many
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
bills have backronyms as their names; examples include the American CARES Act ( Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) of 2020, the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) of 2001, and the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act). In the 113th Congress (2013) there were over 240 bills with such names.
As false etymologies
Sometimes a backronym is reputed to have been used in the formation of the original word, and amounts to a false etymology or an urban legend. Acronyms were rare in the English language prior to the 1930s, and most etymologies of common words or phrases that suggest origin from an acronym are false.
Examples include ''posh'', an adjective describing stylish items or members of the upper class. A popular story derives the word as an acronym from "port out, starboard home", referring to 19th-century first-class cabins on ocean liners, which were shaded from the sun on outbound voyages east (e.g. from Britain to
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
) and homeward voyages west.
; published in the US as
The word's actual etymology is unknown, but more likely related to
Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
''påš xåra'' ("half-penny") or to
Urdu
Urdu (;"Urdu" '' SOS
is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, that was originally established for maritime use. In formal notation is written with an overscore line, to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" ...
is often believed to be an abbreviation for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" but was chosen because it has a simple and unmistakable Morse code representation three dots, three dashes, three dots, sent without any pauses between characters.
More recent examples include the brand name '' Adidas'', named after company founder Adolf "Adi" Dassler but falsely believed to be an acronym for "All Day I Dream About Sport";All Day I Dream About Sport: The Story of the Adidas Brand, The word '' Wiki'', said to stand for "What I Know Is", but in fact derived from the Hawaiian phrase ''wiki-wiki'' meaning "fast"; or Yahoo!, sometimes claimed to mean "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", but in fact chosen because Yahoo's founders liked the word's meaning of "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth" (taken from Jonathan Swift's book '' Gulliver's Travels'').
Mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and image ...