Talk:Acronym

@Bremps I agree that laser is a better example than NYPD (what it was before you changed it). Since laser is pronounced as a word one cannot claim: it's _not_ an acronym; even though that initialism thing is weak IMO. But, I don't think laser is great since it's not all-caps and therefore more unusual. Also, I do not personally like the pic you used. It looks like a gun which is triggering (no pun intended). To me a good pic of a laser is a hand-held pointer or a physics experiment. [I tried to include examples, but WP won't let me link to external images.]

IMO, a good example of acronym is all-caps, has no punctuation and is pronounced as a word. The first one that always pops in my head is NASA. Surely there are many more good candidates. But, most like NASA and what it represents so it's pleasing. Stevebroshar (talk) 12:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

NASA is great. "Taser" as an example of an acronym is loose and weak and while NASA is a more standard, and thus better, example. Bremps... 18:14, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

oh. It was a taser. Makes more sense that it looked like a gun. Stevebroshar (talk) 19:44, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

As is common on WP articles, I think the examples have gone overboard; including too much and also including items that are not examples of the concept of the article.

Amphetamine: is an abbreviation of "alpha-methyl-phenethylamine" but not an acronym since is not just initials; an acronym would be like AMP or AMPT (not a chemist so just guessing at important parts of the words)

Gestapo: is an abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei; GS would be an acronym; I'd say SS is an acronym

All of the Shortcut incorporated into spelling items are questionable. They look sorta like acronyms since they are all-caps without punctuation. But, they seem like something other than an acronym to me. For example, MMM surely is an acronym, but is 3M? 3M seems to be an abbreviation of an abbreviation!

The mnemonics are acronyms, but ... are they on topic? I think not. Same for multi-layered, recursive, gramograms and RAS. Example overkill IMO. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Would agree, as the purpose of examples is to illustrate, not to include everything. If no one objects for a while, I'll be doing a culling. Bremps... 18:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

super Stevebroshar (talk) 19:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Is "Pronounceability" the right spelling? 2405:6E00:632:277D:2A1E:5E80:4267:7597 (talk) 17:31, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

It's in one of the subheadings, but it comes up as red squiggles on my spell check. 2405:6E00:632:277D:2A1E:5E80:4267:7597 (talk) 17:32, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

But maybe it's correct in American but not British, or the other way around? 2405:6E00:632:277D:2A1E:5E80:4267:7597 (talk) 17:34, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

It appears to be correct in both American and British English. If a word is not in a spell check's dictionary of words it may mark it as inaccurate even if it is spelled correctly. - Aoidh (talk) 23:06, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

@Aoidh thank you. 2405:6E00:632:209B:1C6A:F432:E92A:73FA (talk) 00:07, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nohat: Hi: I don't want to keep reverting/repeating myself, so let's have a discussion.

1. We don't bold examples on WP, only titles or title synonyms, per MOS:BOLD.
2. "initial letters or parts"... what is exactly is a part? Why don't we just say "initial letters"? That seems to cover both the narrow and broad senses anyway.
3. Why are you getting rid of the IPA transcriptions? This is useful for some readers and is a typical convention of WP linguistic articles.
4. Although you removed the OED citation that provides examples, it seems pretty clear that in the 1940s, BOTH senses of acronym were rapidly in use and if that kind of variability exists in its very first decade it's not really appropriate then to mark one sense as being the absolute definite "original sense". Literal earliest written records are usually not recoverable and in fact the OED's written records may be secondary to earliest spoken utterances that are certainly not recoverable. A better description would read "both senses became common in the 1940s" (or, if "common" is too presumptuous, "examples of both senses existed by the 1940s").
5. I'm confused by your point that "an acronym is a type of abbreviation" conflates category and example. An acronym is a category (sub-category) of abbreviation. So we can't use "type" to connote that? [I'm fine with your edit here actually, just was confused by the edit summary.]
6. I think some of your simplifications of the lead wording are strong. Wolfdog (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

1. Yes, this was sloppy on my part. Thank you for fixing it.

2. I meant to be inclusive of amphetamine/gestapo/radar types which include non-initial letters, but this nuance could be addressed later in the article. The current revision doesn't really address non-inital letters in acronyms at all now, though, which seems like a gap.

3. The specific IPA transcriptions I removed seemed like visual noise that added little. Explicit exploration of acronym formation and pronunciation would call for IPA. Also, I have sometimes seen the argument rejecting the wordhood of FBI-type acronyms on the basis of "pronounced as a word" in exclusive definitions, and if the article were to add coverage of this, I think the use of IPA would be poignant in demonstrating compliance with linguistic diagnostics for what is a word. Please feel free to restore or add any pronunciation guides you deem add clarity to the article.

4. I don't believe I completely removed the OED citation, as it was referenced in multiple places. I replaced the first reference with the new Zimmer citation which discusses the OED entry for Acronym and the relevant 1940 cite within. Being a secondary, non-primary source makes it stronger for the claim that OED has a 1940 cite which conflicts with later exclusive definitions and claims about their historical precedence.

5. I read it as "an acronym" (meaning a specific example of the category) being equated with "a type" (meaning the entire category). Even though the intended meaning is obvious, to me this wording is imprecise enough to be incorrect, and in an article that leans towards the obsessive side on accuracy in semantics, it seemed prudent to choose an impeccably precise wording.

Nohat (talk) 15:31, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your thorough response. I appreciate all of it. I think I only really need to address 2. The examples you give there verge on being other word types, particularly portmanteaus or clipped compounds (amphetamine for example especially seems unlikely to be called an acronym by laypeople) but I do take your point. Plus of course it's possible to have words that are both acronymish AND portmanteauish etc. I feel the lede sentence can still remain in its current simple state, though I concede it more gives a definition by prototype rather than a perfectly all-inclusive definition that would quickly become complicated and unwieldy. [I do think a definition could read as something like the initial phoneme or group of phonemes for each word in the phrase though this is more likely to baffle ordinary readers. Plus, I'm still going off the pronunciation-first view of what defines a word, as a linguist would.] But anyway I'm happy to concede that IPA is perhaps visually noisy for our basic defining purposes in the lead section. Wolfdog (talk) 16:55, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, Google search for "amphetamine is an acronym" has many high-profile examples of the assertion being made from e.g. Johns Hopkins University, The New York Times (1971), and in a number of published medical science research papers. We also get serious results for "gestapo is an acronym" and "radar is an acronym"; these have persisted in the article's "examples" section for many years. (Not to mention the Google "AI overview" concurs with the assertion for each example.) I'm an advocate of definition by prototype but I believe sufficient coverage requires an exploration of how secondary sources cover the exceptions, boundaries, and where any ambiguities lie. Nohat (talk) 19:54, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

That's all fine (but indeed interesting and somewhat shocking to me). But don't we usually reserve edge cases for the body of the article rather than the lead? If not, then we would have to go beyond the "in the narrower sense versus broader sense" of the lead and instead introduce at least THREE senses! (If you feel it's justified based on the evidence though, then indeed perhaps we ought to go there.) Wolfdog (talk) 11:35, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed "primarily" from the lede because it felt unhelpfully ambiguous.

An acronym is an abbreviation primarily formed using the initial letters of a multi-word name or phrase.

It was unclear to me if the intended reading was that acronyms are formed multiple ways but the primary way is using initial letters (which is obviously not correct—that's the only way acronyms are formed, the nuance is just how many letters count as "initial") or if acronyms are formed via a complex process which is primarily using initial letters but also involves other processes, or whether this is the primary definition, or what. I know we've gone around about ensuring we capture exceptions/nuance but I think there was too much ambiguity to use primarily in this position. Nohat (talk) 18:47, 25 August 2025 (UTC)