Acronym

How to spell acronym

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce acronym

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does acronym mean?

1. nounA word formed from the initial letters of a phrase and pronounced as a single word.

Acronym in a sentence

• The report explained every acronym before using it in the technical sections.

• "radar" is an acronym that most people no longer recognise as one.

Where does acronym come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a relatively modern coinage built from two Greek pieces: akron, meaning 'tip', 'top', or 'extremity' (the same root that gives us 'acrobat' and 'acropolis'), and onyma, meaning 'name' (seen in 'synonym' and 'pseudonym'). Put together it literally means a 'name made from the tips', that is, a word formed from the initial letters of a phrase. The term appears to have been modelled on the German Akronym and entered English in the early 1940s, when the explosion of abbreviated organisation names during wartime made such words common. Strictly speaking an acronym is pronounced as a single word, like NATO or radar, in contrast to an initialism that is spelled out letter by letter. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel, written 'o' in the -onym element even though it sounds like a faint 'uh'.

How the word is built

• acr- (from Greek akron: tip, extremity)
• -onym (from Greek onyma: name)