this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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Too Many Acronyms (i.imgur.com)
submitted 6 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You can check multiple dictionaries (Oxford, Merriam Webster) and they will agree with me.

[–] sus@programming.dev 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

The oxford that says this?

Acronym

  1. A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately; an initialism

or the merriam webster that says this?

Some people feel strongly that acronym should only be used for terms like NATO, which is pronounced as a single word, and that initialism should be used if the individual letters are all pronounced distinctly, as with FBI. Our research shows that acronym is commonly used to refer to both types of abbreviations.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 4 points 5 days ago

Not sure which Oxford dictionary you're using, but the Google one says

an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word (e.g. ASCII, NASA )

Maybe it's been changed?

And Merriam Webster online says:

The word acronym typically applies when the resulting thing can be read as a word

My position on the whole "word meanings change over time" debate is: I agree, but if you used to have two words with distinct meanings and now they are getting collapsed into one, that's mostly because people weren't aware of a subtle distinction. And that's not a good reason to make the distinction meaningless for everyone.

FWIW my original comment was a joke, I hope that was clear.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

This is it. Initialism is synonymous to acronym and some people think they know better and strongly believe that these words have separate meanings.

That's underdog prescriptionism: When you are in the minority but still think you can determine how everyone else has to speak.