Initialism
An initialism is an abbreviation formed by using the first letters, or initials, of a series of words, for example "BBC", or "IBM". The term initialism contrasts with acronym; the term acronym is reserved for cases when the letters form a pronounceable word, like "NATO" or "AIDS", and the term initialism is used for abbreviations which are pronounced instead by sounding out the name of each constituent letter. Thus, BBC ("Bee Bee See") is an initialism, while NATO ("Naytoh") is an acronym. Some do not make this distinction between initialism and acronyms, and call all abbreviations formed out of initial letters acronyms. Under this definition initialisms are a subset of acronyms, without having a word to define acronyms which are not initialisms.
Originally all abbreviations formed out of the initials of the contained words were called initialism, and the word acronym was later coined to describe a subset of initialisms: acronym at this point was still restricted in meaning to "initialisms which form pronounceable words". At some later point many people began to extend the meaning of acronym to all initialisms, at which point the word initialism was restricted in sense to its current meaning.
The world's longest initialism, according to the Guinness Book of World Records is NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT. The 56-letter initialism (54 in Cyrillic) is from the Concise Dictionary of Soviet Terminology and means "The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR".
In some cases, an initialism has been turned into a name. The letters making up the name of the SAT college entrance test, for example, no longer officially stand for anything. This trend has been common with many companies hoping to retain their brand recognition while simultaneously moving away from what they saw as an outdated image: American Telephone and Telegraph is now simply AT&T, the company formerly named Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to "KFC" to avoid negative connotations of the word "Fried"; British Petroleum changed its name to "BP" to emphasize that it was no longer only an oil company (captured by the motto "beyond petroleum"); and Silicon Graphics, Incorporated changed its name to "SGI" to emphasize that it was no longer only a computer graphics company.
The official "full" form of an initialism — what the initialism stands for – may also be changed without revising the initialism. SADD, for instance, originally Students Against Drunk Driving, changed the full form of its name to Students Against Destructive Decisions. YM originally stood for Young Miss, and later Young & Modern, but now stands for simply Your Magazine.
When initialisms are defined in print, especially in the case of industry-specific jargon, the words forming the abbreviation are often capitalized for clarity. While this would be perfectly acceptable for proper nouns like Kentucky Fried Chicken, it is technically incorrect for other terms like storage area network. Correct or not, such usage is widespread in English publications.
Example initialisms
- BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
- CCITT: Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique et Télégraphique
- DMV: Department of Motor Vehicles
- DNA: DeoxyriboNucleic Acid
- DNS: Domain Name System
- EDTA: Ethylene Diamine Tetraacetic Acid
- ICBM: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
- IBM: International Business Machines
- MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
See also
