Blend ofback +acronym.
| Examples |
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- BASIC(“Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”)
- MADD(“Mothers Against Drunk Driving”)
- POSH(“Port Out, Starboard Home”) (folk etymology)
- SAD(“Seasonal Affective Disorder”)
- USA PATRIOT Act
- WASH(“Water, Sanitation and Hygiene”)
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backronym (pluralbackronyms)
- A word that is originally not anacronym but is turned into one by devising a full form for it, sometimes as afolk etymology, sometimes as a contrived acronym to name a new organization, proposal, or other entity.
2022 November 12, Matteo Wong, “How Did America End Up With the Z.O.M.B.I.E. Act?”, inThe Atlantic[1], archived fromthe original on12 November 2022:These reverse-engineered acronyms, or “backronyms,” are inescapable on Capitol Hill. Two of the biggest laws of the past few years were the CARES Act, for pandemic relief, and the CHIPS for America Act, for semiconductor manufacturing.[…] Yet congressionalbackronyms have been on the rise for years: I wrote a computer program to check legislation titles for acronyms that spell out complete words, and found that roughly 10 percent of bills and resolutions introduced over the past two years have hadbackronym names—up from about one in 20 a decade ago and less than 1 percent in the late 1990s.
2023 May 27, Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, “Elon Musk pulled Twitter from the EU's anti-disinformation agreement and continues to troll with alt-right memes and dogwhistles. It could be a sign he'll close the site to Europe completely”, inBusiness Insider[2]:Musk's recent posts have included several references to alt-right themes and fascism, experts told Insider. In a recent post, he shared a meme including Pepe the frog and a caption featuring the word "fren" — an apparent misspelling of the word "friend" — abackronym for "far right ethno nationalist."
- Aphrase which assigns a morpheme or word to each letter of a pre-existing acronym.
word that is originally not an acronym but is turned into one by devising a full form for it
backronym (third-person singular simple presentbackronyms,present participlebackronymingor(rare)backronymming,simple past and past participlebackronymedor(rare)backronymmed)
- To create a backronym.
