A three-letter acronym (TLA), or three-letter abbreviation, is an

abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

consisting of three letters. These are usually the initial letters of the words of the phrase abbreviated, and are written in capital letters (upper case); three-letter ''abbreviations'' such as ''etc.'' and ''Mrs.'' are not three-letter ''acronyms'', but "TLA" is a TLA (an example of an

autological An autological word (also called homological word) is a word that expresses a property that it also possesses (e.g., "word" is a word, "noun" is a noun, "English" is an English word, "wikt:pentasyllabic, pentasyllabic" has five syllables, and " ...

abbreviation). Most three-letter abbreviations are not, strictly,

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 ...

s, but rather

initialism 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 ...

s: all the letters are pronounced as the names of letters, as in '' APA'' . Some are true acronyms, pronounced as a word: as with computed axial tomography, for example, CAT is almost always pronounced as

the animal ''The Animal'' is a 2001 American comedy film directed by Luke Greenfield, written by Rob Schneider and Tom Brady, and starring Schneider in the lead role, Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley, Guy Torry, and Edward Asner. The film depicts a police ...

's name () in "CAT scan". Even the ''initialisms'' are however considered ''three-letter acronyms'', because that term appeared first in widespread use, and is overwhelmingly popular today.

Examples

* Countries:

SRI Shri (; , ) is a Sanskrit term denoting resplendence, wealth and prosperity, primarily used as an honorific. The word is widely used in South and Southeast Asian languages such as Marathi, Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian), Javanes ...

, USA, CAR, UAE,

DRC The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

, etc. * Famous people:

FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

, JFK, MLK, OBL, RBG, RDJ and MJK * Computer phrases:

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

, ROM, and

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

* File extensions:

JPG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image ...

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, and XLS * Corporations: BMW, IBM, AMD and

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

* Currency:

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

GBP Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £) is the main unit of sterling, and ...

, and CHF * Business:

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

CFO The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

and other

C-level Corporate titles or business titles are given to corporate officers to show what duties and responsibilities they have in the organization. Such titles are used by publicly and privately held for-profit corporations, cooperatives, non-profit or ...

officers * Three Letter Agencies:

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, FBI, CBI, FSB, and

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collec ...

Television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid ...

s: ABC ( Aus., U.S.), BBC (UK), CBC (

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

), and

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

(Japan) *

Personal advertisement A personal advertisement, sometimes called a contact ad, is a form of classified advertising in which a person seeks to find another person for friendship, romance, marriage, or sexual activity. In British English, it is commonly known as an adve ...

s: SBM for Single Black Male, STR for Short Term Relationship * Chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals:

GMO A genetically modified organism (GMO) is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. The exact definition of a genetically modified organism and what constitutes genetic engineering varies, with ...

LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...

and MSG * Religion:

LDS LDS may refer to: Organizations * LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah, US Religion * Latter Day Saint movement (LDS movement), a collection of independent church groups **The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest group within t ...

, SBC and SDA * Clinical medicine:

CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

and CHF * Communications shorthand:

LOL LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to ...

and OMG * Military and weaponry: BFR and RPG * Wars and political conflicts: HYW and WWI * IATA airport codes: LAX and LHR * Academic testing: ACT, SAT * Musical groups: R.E.M.,

XTC XTC were an English rock band formed in Swindon in 1972. Fronted by songwriters Andy Partridge (guitars, vocals) and Colin Moulding (bass, vocals), the band gained popularity during the rise of punk and new wave in the 1970s, later playing i ...

, TLC,

E.L.O. The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) are an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1970 by songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood with drummer Bev Bevan. Their music is characterised by a fusion of pop, classical ar ...

, MC5, GBH, O.A.R., MDC, D.R.I., JFA * Canine registries: AKC and CKC * Sports organizations: NFL, MLB, (North America);

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

and

NRL The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership ...

(Australia); NPB (Japan); ACB, LFP (Spain); IPL (India), EPL (England),

WBO The World Boxing Organization (WBO) is an organization which sanctions professional boxing bouts. It is recognized by the International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF) as one of the four major world championship groups, alongside the World Boxing ...

Ship prefix A ship prefix is a combination of letters, usually abbreviations, used in front of the name of a civilian or naval ship that has historically served numerous purposes, such as identifying the vessel's mode of propulsion, purpose, or ownership/n ...

es: HMS, USS and RMS * State postal abbreviations: NSW, QLD, VIC and TAS (Australia) * Political Parties:

BJP The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Mo ...

, CCP, GOP and AAP *Air Navigation Services ( ANS): SAR, AIS, FPC, ATM, MET, CNS, ASM, ATS, ATC,

FIS FIS or fis may refer to: Science and technology * '' Fis'', an ''E. Coli'' gene * Fis phenomenon, a phenomenon in linguistics * F♯ (musical note) * Flight information service, an air traffic control service * Frame Information Structure, a Se ...

History and origins

The exact phrase ''three-letter acronym'' appeared in the sociology literature in 1975. Three-letter acronyms were used as

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 ...

s in biological sciences, from 1977 and their practical advantage was promoted by Weber in 1982. They are used in many other fields, but the term TLA is particularly associated with computing. In 1980, the manual for the Sinclair ZX81 home computer used and explained TLA. Steven Vickers ''ZX81 Basic Programming'', Sinclair Research Limited, page 161 "As you can see, everything has a three letter abbreviation (TLA)." The specific generation of three-letter acronyms in computing was mentioned in a JPL report of 1982.TDA Progress Report
R. Hull (1982) An Introduction to the new Productivity Information Management System page 176 In 1988, in a paper titled "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science", eminent computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra wrote (disparagingly), "No endeavour is respectable these days without a TLA" By 1992 it was in a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

handbook.

Combinatorics

The number of possible three-letter abbreviations using the 26 letters of the alphabet from A to Z (AAA, AAB ... to ZZY, ZZZ) is 26 × 26 × 26 = 17,576. An additional 26 × 26 × 10 = 6760 can be produced for each single position allowed to be a digit 0-9, such as 2FA, P2P, or WW2, giving a total of 37,856 such three-character strings. In standard

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

, WWW is the TLA whose

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

requires the most

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...

s—typically nine. The usefulness of TLAs typically comes from its being quicker to say than the phrase it represents; however saying 'WWW' in English requires three times as many syllables as the phrase it is meant to abbreviate (World Wide Web). "WWW" is sometimes abbreviated to "dubdubdub" in speech.

References in popular culture

* As early as 1967, the musical

Hair Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals. The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and fi ...

included the song "Initials", whose final verse consisted only of TLAs, viz: " LBJ IRT USA

. LSD LBJ FBI

. FBI CIA LSD LBJ." * In 1999, the author

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), BBC radio comedy, ''The H ...

remarked: "The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for." * According to the

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET ...

, a journalist once asked hacker

Paul Boutin Paul Boutin (born December 11, 1961 in Lewiston, Maine) is an American magazine writer and editor who writes about technology in a pop-culture context. Boutin, who began writing for ''Wired'' in 1997, wrote for ''The New York Times'' from 2003 ...

what he thought the biggest problem in computing in the 1990s would be. Paul's straight-faced response was: "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." * The

also mentions the abbreviation "ETLA" for "extended three-letter acronym" to refer to four-letter acronyms/abbreviations. "Extended three-letter acronym" is sometimes abbreviated to "XTLA".TLA
jargon.net * In the comic strip

Dilbert ''Dilbert'' is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title charact ...

the title character is working on a project called TTP. The initials stand for 'The TTP Project.' This is also an example of a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hofs ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Three-letter Acronym Abbreviations T

Examples

History and origins

Combinatorics

References in popular culture

See also

References