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Acronym and initialism - History | | Acronym and initialism - History: Encyclopedia II - Acronym and initialism - History | | Acronyms and initialisms are a relatively new linguistic phenomenon, having only become popular during the 20th century. As literacy rates rose, the practice of referring to words by their first letters became increasingly convenient. The first recorded use of the word initialism in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is in 1899, and the first for acronym is in 1943. The word acronym comes from Greek: ακρος, akro ...
See also:Acronym and initialism, Acronym and initialism - History, Acronym and initialism - Written usage, Acronym and initialism - Nomenclature, Acronym and initialism - Examples, Acronym and initialism - Trivia | | | Acronym and initialism, Acronym and initialism - Examples, Acronym and initialism - History, Acronym and initialism - Nomenclature, Acronym and initialism - Trivia, Acronym and initialism - Written usage, -onym, Internet slang, List of abbreviations, List of acronyms and initialisms, List of songs titled as acronyms or initialisms, RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome), TLA (three-letter acronym/abbreviation), apronym, backronym, pseudo-acronym, recursive acronym, Newspeak#Abbreviations_and_Acronyms, syllabic abbreviation, Acronyms in the Philippines | | |
| | | Acronym and initialism: Encyclopedia II - Acronym and initialism - History
Acronym and initialism - History
Acronyms and initialisms are a relatively new linguistic phenomenon, having only become popular during the 20th century. As literacy rates rose, the practice of referring to words by their first letters became increasingly convenient. The first recorded use of the word initialism in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is in 1899, and the first for acronym is in 1943. The word acronym comes from Greek: ακρος, akros, "topmost, extreme" + ονομα, onoma, "name".
Nonetheless, earlier examples of acronyms exist. The early Christians in Rome used a fish as a symbol for Jesus in part because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthus), which was said to stand for Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ (Iesous CHristos THeou (h)Uios Soter: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour). Evidence of this interpretation dates from the second and third centuries and is preserved in the catacombs of Rome.
Initialisms are known to have been used in Rome dating back even earlier than the Christian era. For example, the official name for the Roman Empire (and the Republic before it) was abbreviated as SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), showing a clear precedent.
Acronyms have been widely used in Hebrew since at least the Middle Ages. Several important rabbis are referred to with acronyms of their names. For example, Baal Shem Tov is called Besht. The word Tanakh is also an acronym.
Acronyms and initialisms often occur in jargon or as names of organizations because they often serve as abbreviations of long terms that are frequently referenced, so a shortened form is desirable. Militaries and government agencies frequently employ acronyms and initialisms, perhaps most famously the US Government and the so-called alphabet agencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The correct meaning of an acronym is frequently domain-specific knowledge, and many acronyms have different meanings in different domains. This has led some to use them to obfuscate meaning from those without such domain-specific knowledge.
Other related archives-onym, 1899, 1943, 1960s, 1966, 1980s, 1990s, 20th century, 3M, Individual Retirement Account, Irish Republican Army, AAA, AIDS, AT&T, Acronyms in the Philippines, Airwolf, BBC, BP, Baal Shem Tov, British Petroleum, C.O.N.T.R.O.L., CD-ROM, CONMEBOL, Christians, Cyrillic, DNA, DNS, DVD, Dragnet, E³, FAQ, Fourth generation language, Franklin D. Roosevelt, GNU, Gestapo, Get Smart, Greek, Group of 77, Guinness Book of World Records, Gödel, Escher, Bach, HTML, Hebrew, ICBM, IEEE, IRA, IUPAC, International Business Machines, Internet slang, Interpol, JPEG, James Bond, Jesus, K.A.O.S., KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken, List of abbreviations, List of acronyms and initialisms, List of songs titled as acronyms or initialisms, M.A.S.K., MS-DOS, Marvel comics, Massive Ordnance Air Blast, Middle Ages, NAACP, NATO, NCAA, New Deal, Newspeak#Abbreviations_and_Acronyms, Nick Fury, No One Lives Forever, Oxford English Dictionary, PDFORRA, Penguin, RADAR, RAM, RAS syndrome, Rome, S.H.I.E.L.D., S.P.E.C.T.R.E., SADD, SAT college entrance test, SCSI, SPQR, SQL, Silicon Graphics, Incorporated, Spanish, TLA, TV, Tanakh, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The New York Times, Trustee Savings Bank, U.N.C.L.E., US Government, United States Navy, VAT, VISA, W3C, WINE, XHTML, YM, YRUU, abbreviations, affiliates, apronym, backronym, backronyms, brand, capitalized, cardinal, catacombs, digits, fish, full stop/period, function words, ichthus, jargon, laser, linguistic, ordinal, portmanteau, proper nouns, pseudo-acronym, rabbis, radar, recursive acronym, recursive acronyms, saturday morning cartoon, scuba, storage area network, style guides, syllabic abbreviation
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
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