the.com/acronym
a word that ate a whole sentence and now refuses to spit it back out
means a word formed from the initial letters of a phrase, pronounced as a single word rather than spelled out letter by letter.
from Built from Greek akron, 'tip' or 'end' (the same root in 'acropolis,' the city's high point), plus onyma, 'name' — so literally a 'tip-name,' a name made from the tips of words. It's a surprisingly young term, an early 20th-century coinage that arrived only once we'd produced enough alphabet-soup phrases to need a label for the leftover broth.
- laser origin
- means light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
- recursive joke
- GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, infinitely
- scuba truth
- self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, fully spelled out
- recent word
- the term itself dates only to the 1940s
- backronym trick
- meanings invented after the abbreviation already existed
nasa — national aeronautics and space administration, founded 1958, sent humans to the moon
scuba — self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, invented by jacques cousteau in 1943
radar — radio detection and ranging, developed in 1935, used in world war ii
sonar — sound navigation and ranging, used by navies worldwide to detect submarines