A backronym or bacronym^[1] is a reverse acronym Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters or parts of words (as in Benelux or Delmarva). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature), nor on written usage (see orthographic styling), a phrase constructed after the fact to make an existing word or words into an acronym. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology Folk etymology, in its basic sense, refers to popularly held beliefs about the origins of specific words, especially where these originate in "common-sense" assumptions rather than serious research (compare folk science, folk psychology etc.). In historical linguistics, the term is most often used in a more technical sense, to refer to a.

The word is understood as a blend In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes combining back and acronym. Its earliest known citation in print is "bacronym" in the November 1983^[1] edition of the Washington Post The Washington Post is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Washington, D.C. and is the city's oldest paper, founded in 1877. Being located in the nation's capital, it has a particular emphasis on national politics and international affairs. It is a newspaper of record and a regional paper; only D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are monthly neologism contest (1983–2004): journalist Bob Levey quoted winning reader "Meredith G. Williams of Potomac" defining it as the "same as an acronym, except that the words were chosen to fit the letters."^[1] Actual use of the word is found in texts since at least 1994.^[1]

Backronym versus acronym

An acronym is a pronounceable word derived from the initial letters of a phrase:^[2] For example, the word radar Radar is an object detection system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The term RADAR was coined in 1941 as an acronym for radio detection and ranging. The term has since entered the English comes from "Radio Detection and Ranging".^[3]

By contrast, a backronym is constructed by taking an existing word already in common usage, and creating a new phrase using the letters in the word as the initial letters of the words in the phrase, such as bible - basic instructions before leaving earth. The word then becomes an acronym of the phrase.

The idea that a backronym, like an acronym, is a pronounceable word, is sometimes broken, even by dictionaries providing examples such as DVD DVD, also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storage. DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs but store more than six times as much data (an initialism Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters or parts of words (as in Benelux or Delmarva). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature), nor on written usage (see orthographic styling))^[4] and SOS SOS is the commonly used description for the international Morse code distress signal . This distress signal was first adopted by the German government in radio regulations effective April 1, 1905, and became the worldwide standard under the second International Radiotelegraphic Convention, which was signed on November 3, 1906 and became effective (a representation of the emergency signal used in Morse code Morse code is a type of character encoding that transmits telegraphic information using rhythm. Morse code uses a standardized sequence of short and long elements to represent the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a given message. The short and long elements can be formed by sounds, marks, or pulses, in on off keying and are).^[5]

Examples

Jokes and pejorative meanings

• TWAIN TWAIN is a standard software protocol and applications programming interface that regulates communication between software applications and imaging devices such as scanners and digital cameras - Technology Without An Interesting Name.^[6]
• DELTA Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE: DAL) is a United States airline based and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Delta operates an extensive domestic and international network, spanning North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Australia. Delta began service to Sydney, Australia in July 2009, which made it - Doesn't Ever Leave the Airport.^[7]
• FORD The Ford Motor Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's fourth largest automaker based on worldwide vehicle sales, following Toyota, General Motors, and Volkswagen. Based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, the automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford, Lincoln, - Fix Or Repair Daily ^[8]
• FIAT Fiat S.p.A., an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial and industrial group based in Turin in the Piedmont region. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli. Fiat has also manufactured tanks and aircraft. As of 2009, Fiat is the world' - Fix It Again Tomorrow or Fix It Again, Tony.^[9]
• IACOCCA Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca is an American businessman most commonly known for his revival of the Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s, serving as President and CEO from 1978 and additionally as chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992. One of the most famous business people in the world, he was a passionate advocate of U - I Am Chairman of Chrysler Corporation America. Making reference to American businessman Lee Iacocca Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca is an American businessman most commonly known for his revival of the Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s, serving as President and CEO from 1978 and additionally as chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992. One of the most famous business people in the world, he was a passionate advocate of U.^{[10][11][page needed]}

Education

Backronyms can be constructed for educational purposes, for example to form mnemonics A mnemonic device is a memory and/or learning aid. Commonly met mnemonics are often verbal, something such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something, particularly lists, but may be visual, kinesthetic or auditory. Mnemonics rely on associations between easy-to-remember constructs which can be related back to so that the new initialism is easier to remember.

An example of such a mnemonic is the Apgar score The Apgar score was devised in 1952 by Dr. Virginia Apgar as a simple and repeatable method to quickly and summarily assess the health of newborn children immediately after childbirth. Apgar was an anesthesiologist who developed the score in order to ascertain the effects of obstetric anesthesia on babies, used to assess the health of newborn children. The rating system was devised by and named after Virginia Apgar Virginia Apgar was an American physician who specialised in anesthesia and pediatrics. She was a leader in the fields of anesthesiology and teratology, and effectively founded the field of neonatology. To the public, however, she is best known as the developer of the Apgar test, a method of assessing the health of newborn babies that has, but ten years after the initial publication, the backronym APGAR^[12] was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: Appearance (skin color), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflex irritability), Activity (muscle tone), and Respiration.

12-step Programs

Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide fellowship of men and women who share a desire to stop drinking alcohol. AA suggests members completely abstain from alcohol, regularly attend meetings with other members, and follow its program to help each other with their common purpose; to help members "stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve and other 12-step programs have a verbal culture that makes extensive use of backronyms. They're used as teaching tools, similar to slogans like "one day at a time," or "Let go, let God," but often have an ironic edge.

• God = Good Orderly Direction^[13]
• Halt = Hungry Angry Lonely or Tired
• Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real / Forgetting everything is all right / Forget Everything And Run / Face Everything And Recover
• Slip = Sobriety Losing Its Priority^[14]
• Denial = Don't Even Notice I Am Lying
• Fine = Filled up (or Freaked out), Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional

False acronyms

Sometimes the backronym is so commonly heard, that it is generally but incorrectly believed to have been used in the formation of the word, and amounts to a folk etymology Folk etymology, in its basic sense, refers to popularly held beliefs about the origins of specific words, especially where these originate in "common-sense" assumptions rather than serious research (compare folk science, folk psychology etc.). In historical linguistics, the term is most often used in a more technical sense, to refer to a or an urban legend An urban legend, urban myth, or urban tale is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them. The term is often used to mean something akin to an "apocryphal story." Like all folklore, urban legends are not necessarily false, but they are often distorted, exaggerated, or sensationalized. Examples of these include:

• The word wiki, halved from the Hawaiian The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840 phrase "wiki wiki" meaning "fast".^[15] Since its application to consumer generated media, some have suggested that "wiki" means "What I Know Is".^[16]
• Adidas Adidas AG is a German-based sports apparel manufacturer and part of the Adidas Group, which consists of Reebok sportswear company, TaylorMade-adidas golf company, and Rockport. Besides sports footwear, the company also produces other products such as bags, shirts, watches, eyewear and other sports and clothing related goods. The company is the has been explained as "All Day I Dream About Sports". The word Adidas actually comes from the nickname of the company's founder, Adi Dassler.^[17] It was also alternatively backronymed as "All Day I Dream About Sex",^[18] a backronym popularized by the band Korn Korn is an American rock band from Bakersfield, California, which formed in 1993. The band's catalogue consists of nine consecutive debuts in the top ten of the Billboard 200. To date, Korn has sold over 30 million albums worldwide while earning six Grammy nominations—two of which they have won and rapper Killer Mike, who recorded a song A.D.I.D.A.S.. In Spanish, a popular and sarcastic backronym for Adidas is "Asociación De Idiotas Dispuestos A Superarse" ("Association Of Idiots Willing To Improve").^[19] In Dutch, a similar joke exists, "Alle Domme Idioten Doen Aan Sport" ("All dumb idiots engage in sports")
• Kiss Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in December 1972. Easily identified by its members' trademark face paint and stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid and late-1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting, smoking guitars, and pyrotechnics. Kiss has been is simply the name of the band, but an urban legend An urban legend, urban myth, or urban tale is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them. The term is often used to mean something akin to an "apocryphal story." Like all folklore, urban legends are not necessarily false, but they are often distorted, exaggerated, or sensationalized developed which claims that the letters stand for "Knights In Satan's Service"; other versions use "Kings" or "Kids" instead of "Knights".^[20]
• Posh did not originally stand for "Port Out, Starboard Home Port Out, Starboard Home is a phrase popularly believed to provide the etymology for the word posh. According to this belief, "Port Out" and "Starboard Home" were the most desirable cabin locations on ships traveling to and from British colonies in the Far East before the development of air conditioning, because they were" (referring to 1st class cabins shaded from the sun on outbound voyages east, and homeward heading voyages west).^[21] The musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang popularised this erroneous etymology.^[21]
• Golf Golf is an outdoor lawn sport in which competing players using many types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course in the lowest number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not use a standardized playing area; rather the game is played on golf "courses", each one of which has a unique design and is not an acronym for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden" as has been suggested.^[22] It is actually derived from the old Scots Scots or Lowland Scots refers to the Germanic varieties spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic, the surviving Celtic language of Scotland name for the game, gowf. This word may, in turn, be related to the Dutch word kolf, meaning "bat", or "club", and the Dutch sport called Kolven Kolven is a game originated in the Netherlands, played by several individuals with heavy curved bats (klieks) and a ball between two poles on an indoor kolf court.^[21]
• The Apple Lisa The Apple Lisa was a personal computer designed at Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980s, named after a person, was called Lisa as a development project, but marketeers coined the false acronym "Local Integrated Software/System Architecture" when it became a product.
• Ping Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network; it is also used to self test the network interface card of the computer, or as a speed test. It works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies. Ping measures the round- does not stand for "Packet InterNet Grouper", "Packet InterNet Groper", "Packet InterNet Gopher" or any such phrase. The name is merely a reference to sonar Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater) to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels. There are two kinds of sonar: active and passive. Sonar may be used as a means of acoustic location and of measurement of the echo characteristics of "targets" in the water. Acoustic location in air was used before.^[23]
• Microsoft's Bing Bing is a web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine"), Microsoft's current incarnation of its search technology. Unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009 at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, Bing is a replacement for Live Search. It went fully online on June 3, 2009, with a preview version released service has been likened to the backronym "But It's Not Google Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View,"^[24] or the recursive bacronym "BING Is Not Google Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View,"^[25][26].
• The word "fuck" is sometimes falsely claimed to be derived from "For unlawful carnal knowledge", words allegedly placed above people being punished for adultery in Puritan stockades.^[27] The hard rock Hard rock or heavy rock is a sub-genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage and psychedelic rock and is considerably harder than conventional rock music. It is typified by a heavy use of distorted electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, pianos, and other keyboards band Van Halen Van Halen is a hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California in 1972. They enjoyed success from the release of their self titled debut album in 1978. As of 2007 Van Halen has sold more than 80 million albums worldwide and have had the most number one hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. During the 1980s they also had more Billboard Hot 100 used this backronym as the title of their 1990 album. Fuck is also known as "fornication under consent of King".^[27] Actually, it is of Common Germanic Proto-Germanic, or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the hypothetical common ancestor of all the Germanic languages such as modern English, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish. The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the origin and has absolutely nothing to do with backronyms. The German equivalent is "ficken".

See also

External links

• Backronym expansions of ACRONYM (Acronym Finder)
• World Wide Words is not specifically about backronyms, but several false examples are discussed among its articles.
• Online Backronym Generator
• Mug of Piss generates contextual backronyms

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} McFedries, Paul. "bacronym". Word Spy: The World Lover's Guide to New Words. WordSpy.com. http://www.wordspy.com/words/bacronym.asp. Retrieved on 2009-05-19.
2. ^ "Acronym". Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/acronym. Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
3. ^ NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. NASA was established on July 29, 1958, by the National Aeronautics and Space Act. "RADAR means: Radio Detection and Ranging". Nasa Explores. Archived from the original on 2007-10-14. http://web.archive.org/web/20071014061010/http://nasaexplores.com/show_k4_teacher_st.php?id=030703122033.
4. ^ "Backronym Definition". PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=backronym&i=56302,00.asp. Retrieved on 2006-11-14.
5. ^ "Acronym". WhatIs.com. http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci211518,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
6. ^ http://www.twain.org/faqs.shtm#What%20is%20TWAIN%20an%20acronym%20for
7. ^ http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/col/smith/2005/08/05/askthepilot148/index.html
8. ^ http://www.opednews.com/articles/FORD--Fix-Or-Repair-Daily-by-Will-Roberts-081204-725.html
9. ^ http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/spinning-wheels-community-car-lovers/2008/Jun/04/fix-it-again-tony/
10. ^ http://www.ucg.org/sermons/transcripts/200701publicopinion.htm
11. ^ Gorman, Dave (2008). America Unchained: A Freewheeling Road Trip in Search of Non-corporate USA. Ebury Press. ISBN 9780091899332.
12. ^ "The Virginia Apgar Papers - Obstetric Anesthesia and a Scorecard for Newborns, 1949-1958". U.S. National Library of Medicine, NIH. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CP/Views/Exhibit/narrative/obstetric.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-18.
13. ^ Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly: Volume: 10 Issue: 1/2, ISSN: 0734-7324 Pub Date: 8/6/1993 "Working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with a Client A Counseling Opportunity" Dan L. Thompson PhD
14. ^ "Keep Coming Back: Humor and Wisdom for Living and Loving Recovery by Meiji Stewart Google Books Result". http://books.google.com/books?id=gf4y3fdElKgC&pg=PA79&dq=%22Sobriety+losing+its+priority%22&ei=BAV0SIGOM4fKjgGntpTpBw&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U2KMTloFo6yCCL2D3du4cSScFzF2w. Retrieved on 2008-07-08.
15. ^ "wiki - Definitions from Dictionary.com". http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wiki. Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
16. ^ "The wiki principle". http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794228. Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
17. ^ All Day I Dream About Sport: The Story of the Adidas Brand, ISBN 1904879128
18. ^ "Urban Legends References Pages: Adidas". http://www.snopes.com/business/names/adidas.asp. Retrieved on 2007-10-15.
19. ^ "Ludoacronimia". http://usuarios.lycos.es/encofratasparadise/ludoacronimia.htm. Retrieved on 2008-02-08. .
20. ^ Brothers, Fletcher A. in "The Rock Report", 1987 cites a January 1980 American Photographer article as his source.
21. ^ ^{a b c} Quinion, Michael (2005). Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-101223-4. ; published in the US as Quinion, Michael (2006). Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-085153-8.
22. ^ See article at Snopes.
23. ^ "The Story of Ping". http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html.
24. ^ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KE30Dj03.html
25. ^ http://www.bingisnotgoogle.com/
26. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/08/netbytes-microsoft-bing
27. ^ ^{a b} "The Etymology of Fuck". http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.asp.

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