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Do you know what an acronym is?

An acronym can be an acronym that is pronounced like a word and that, due to frequent use, ends up being incorporated into the usual lexicon. It can also be a word formed by the union of different parts of two words. In this note, Billiken tells you all the details.

An acronym can be an acronym that is pronounced like a word and that, due to frequent use, ends up being incorporated into the usual lexicon. Such is the case of the word “laser”, which is the acronym for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation” (“Amplification of light by stimulated emission of radiation”, in Spanish). The same goes for the word “radar”, an acronym for “Radio Detection and Ranging” (“Detection and radio range”, in Spanish).

An acronym can also be a word formed by joining different parts of two words. In this case, the acronym is formed by taking the start of the first word and the end of the second. Some examples are: “Bit” (acronym for “Binary Digit” —“Binary Digit” in Spanish—) and “Transistor” (acronym for “Transfer Resistor” —“Transfer Resistance” in Spanish—).

Acronyms are written without dots between each letter, unlike abbreviations, which do have a full stop. They can be made up of two nouns (for example: “motel”, from the English “motor” and “hotel”), a noun and an adjective (for example: “docudrama”, from the Spanish “dramatic documentary”) or two adjectives (for example: “spanglish”, from the English “spanish” and “english”).

The retroacronym, a special case

A retroacronym is a type of acronym that starts out as a commonly used word and then ends up being interpreted as an acronym. For example, the name of the Uruguayan socio-educational project “Plan Ceibal” is a retro acronym that means “Basic Computing Educational Connectivity Plan for Online Learning”. However, the word “ceibal” in common use means land with ceibo plantations, which is the national flower of Argentina and Uruguay.

examples of acronyms

Today many acronyms are used without thinking about the set of words that gave rise to them. Here are some examples:

• “Emoticón”, from the English “Emotion” and “Icon”.
• “Informatics”, from the Spanish “Information” and “Automatics”.
• “ICT”, for “Information and Communication Technologies”.
• “LED”, for “Light Emitting Diode”.
• “UFO”, for “Unidentified Flying Object”.
• “AIDS”, for “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome”.
• “UNESCO”, by “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”.