A true acronym, to the purists, creates a new word from letters (examples: NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization and NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration). (Examples: NFL, National Football League and ABC, American Broadcasting Company). In other words, it is just initialism when the words are pronounced as separate letters. Some reputable style guides (like my friends: the Oxford English Dictionary and Encyclopedia Brittanica) generally criticize using “acronym” to refer to a word that is not pronounceable. We’re here to tell you that this is a hotly debated topic among linguists. Acronyms are usually in the form of initialisms, which is when a phrase is represented by the first letter of each word that makes it up. (short for Doctor) to Dec (short for December) to Rly (short for really) to LOL (short for laugh out loud). The term “abbreviation” is the umbrella term for all of our shortened words or phrases, but it covers a lot … from Dr.
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