Abbreviations are shortened forms of words or phrases. If the resulting abbreviation is pronounced as a word, it is an acronym. Acronyms can leave out “little words” and combine initials with abbreviations. Some acronyms use more than one letter from each word. Some well-known acronyms include scuba, radar, and laser. The origin of posh as an acronym is controversial.
Abbreviations are used to provide a shortened form of a word or phrase. An abbreviation style combines the initial letters of each word into a series. In cases where the resulting abbreviation is pronounced by pronouncing each of the letters in order, it is called an abbreviation. An example is the abbreviation for extrasensory perception, which is ESP.
Cases where this abbreviation is pronounced as a word in and of itself, form a different class of abbreviation, called an acronym. Acronyms were first used in the 1940s. The name comes from two Greek words, akron, meaning “end or point” and onumon, meaning “name.”
To form a pronounceable word, an acronym can leave out the “little words” in the series by not supplying a letter to represent them. An example is the NASDAQ system. The actual phrase is: “National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System” but, as you can see, the word “of” is not represented in the acronym.
Another liberty that acronyms can take is to include an initial for each part of a compound word. Some abbreviations combine the initial with an acronym. A CD-Rom, where the first two letters are pronounced as the names of letters, and the last three are pronounced as a word, is one example. JPEG and MS-DOS follow suit.
Another variation is to use more than one letter from each word in order to create an acronym that is pronounceable as a word. This is true, for example with the acronym for lower power mode, which is not “lpm”, but “lopomo”, using the first two letters of each word in the sequence.
In some cases, an acronym is used so often that some people may not recognize it as an acronym. This is known to happen with the following:
• scuba — autonomous underwater breathing apparatus
• radar — bearing and radio range
• laser — light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
Posh may be the word that has caused the biggest discussion in the acronym world. Some argue that posh stands for “Port Out, Starboard Home,” reportedly the preferred seating position for passengers on ships traveling from England to India and home in the 1800s. This etymology is undocumented and is controversial, although there is no clear and accepted alternative.
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