{"id":260,"date":"2018-11-06T11:11:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T11:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/?p=260"},"modified":"2018-11-06T11:11:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T11:11:22","slug":"acronym-abbreviation-initialism-blending-and-the-unknown-learn-the-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/acronym-abbreviation-initialism-blending-and-the-unknown-learn-the-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"ACRONYM, ABBREVIATION, INITIALISM, BLENDING AND THE UNKNOWN: LEARN THE DIFFERENCES"},"content":{"rendered":"

ACRONYM, ABBREVIATION, INITIALISM, BLENDING AND THE UNKNOWN: LEARN THE DIFFERENCES<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Hassan Abdulbaqi<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are liable to interchange acronym, abbreviation and initialism if we don\u2019t know their individual meanings. They all refer to shortening a word or sentences but they are all different. In fact, there is also a kind of shortening that has not been named as we shall see later in this article.<\/p>\n

Acronym <\/strong>is a type of shortening that is formed in a way that makes it possible to pronounce the formation. AIDS (A<\/strong>cquired I<\/strong>mmune D<\/strong>eficiency S<\/strong>yndrome), UNESCO (U<\/strong>nited N<\/strong>ations E<\/strong>ducational, S<\/strong>cientific and C<\/strong>ultural O<\/strong>rganization), RADAR (R<\/strong>adio D<\/strong>etection a<\/strong>nd R<\/strong>anging) and so on. The letters in this shortenings are not individually pronounced, they are rather pronounced like every other word- paper, aid, radio\u2026etc.<\/p>\n

Initialism <\/strong>is a kind of shortening where the first letter of each word is pronounced separately. HIV (h<\/strong>uman i<\/strong>mmunodeficiency v<\/strong>irus), WHO (W<\/strong>orld H<\/strong>ealth O<\/strong>rganization), BBC (B<\/strong>ritish B<\/strong>roadcasting C<\/strong>orporation), SMS (S<\/strong>hort M<\/strong>essage S<\/strong>ystems) and so on. The initials are pronounced individual, in variance with acronyms, where the shortenings sound like a word.<\/p>\n

Abbreviation <\/strong>was derived from brevis<\/em>, a Latin word which means \u2018short\u2019, the same Latin word that can be attributed to the formation of English words like \u2018brief\u2019 and \u2018brevity\u2019. It is merely a shortened form of a word and does not involve more than word, as opposed to acronyms and initialisms. We have:<\/p>\n

Mr. for Mister<\/p>\n

Jnr. for Junior<\/p>\n

St. for Saints<\/p>\n

Dr. for Doctor<\/p>\n

As for blending,<\/strong> it is simply the formation of words by bringing parts of two different words together. \u2018Parts\u2019 because the two words in question are no more in their complete forms. Examples are edutainment (education + entertainment), \u00a0motel (motorist + hotel), brunch (breakfast+lunch), smog, webinar (web + seminar). The created words are called blends <\/strong>and they combine the meaning of the two words they are formed from.<\/p>\n

The unknown? <\/strong>You may wonder if there is a kind of shortening that has not been named in English Language, but there is. That is when initialism (first letter) is joined with acronym (shortenings in form of individual words) like we have in JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group), MCAN (Muslim Corpers\u2019 Association of Nigeria), MS-DOS (Microsoft disk operating system) and so on.<\/p>\n

For this unknown type of word formation, I suggest inicronym, which is a blend of initialism and acronym. It does not only fit to the hearing but also merges the features of both shortenings, do you agree?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ACRONYM, ABBREVIATION, INITIALISM, BLENDING AND THE UNKNOWN: LEARN THE DIFFERENCES By Hassan Abdulbaqi   We are liable to interchange acronym, abbreviation and initialism if we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[161,141,159,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flyingcolours.ng\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}