Backronym
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-02-28

Backronym, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36982 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Acronyms
#Etymology
#Folklore
#Neologisms
#Types_of_words
#Words_coined_in_the_1980s
Backronym

A backronym, or bacronym, is a constructed phrase that purports to be the source of a word that is an acronym. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology.

An acronym is a word derived from the initial letters of the words of a phrase: For example, the word "radar" comes from "radio detection and ranging".

By contrast, a backronym is constructed by creating a new phrase to fit an already-existing word, name, or acronym. For example, the United States Department of Justice assigns to its Amber Alert program the meaning "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response," but the term originally referred to Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996.

Backronyms are often used for comedic effect, as when NASA named its ISS treadmill the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (C.O.L.B.E.R.T.) after Stephen Colbert. The backronym was a lighthearted compromise in recognition of the comedian's ability to sway NASA's online vote for the naming of an ISS module later named "Tranquility".
The word is a combination of "backward" and "acronym", and has been defined as a "reverse acronym". Its earliest known citation in print is as "bacronym" in the November 1983 edition of the "Washington Post" monthly neologism contest. The newspaper quoted winning reader Meredith G. Williams of Potomac, Maryland, defining it as the "same as an acronym, except that the words were chosen to fit the letters".

Backronyms can be constructed for educational purposes, for example to form mnemonics. An example of such a mnemonic is the Apgar score, used to assess the health of newborn babies. The rating system was devised by and named after Virginia Apgar, but ten years after the initial publi...