From owner-freebsd-doc Sat Aug 18 5:21:50 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from aragorn.neomedia.it (aragorn.neomedia.it [195.103.207.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A9D3337B40B; Sat, 18 Aug 2001 05:21:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bartequi@neomedia.it) Received: (from httpd@localhost) by aragorn.neomedia.it (8.11.4/8.11.4) id f7ICLYK30947; Sat, 18 Aug 2001 14:21:34 +0200 (CEST) To: Rahul Siddharthan Subject: Re: Message-ID: <998137293.3b7e5dce03208@webmail.neomedia.it> Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 14:21:34 +0200 (CEST) From: Salvo Bartolotta Cc: Nik Clayton , Mark Ovens , John Murphy , doc@FreeBSD.ORG MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: IMP/PHP IMAP webmail program 2.2.4-cvs X-WebMail-Company: Neomedia s.a.s. X-Originating-IP: 62.98.163.170 Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > My understanding was that an "acronym" is a *word* (like laser, basic > (the language), etc) made from initial letters of other words. > "Fortran" would also qualify, I think. IDE, and probably BIOS (being > all caps) would be abbreviations, like BBC and CNN. I don't have a > dictionary handy so I can't verify it... Acronyms are also > abbreviations, of course, so "abbreviation" should always be accurate, > if longer. Essentially correct. My Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary spits out: acronym, n, word formed from the initial letters of a group of words, eg UNESCO, ie United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. My New Oxford Dictionary of English (Pearsall 1998) spits out virtually the same definition. BTW, the word comes from Greek (acron ~ end, tip; onyma ~ name) and first appears in the 1940s. -- Salvo To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message