Appendix Acronyms

In the left margin you will find links to the acronyms categorised alphabetically. Some of the pages are quite long and may take a few moments to load if you use a modem.

Acronyms

What's an Acronym?

Here's an example of an acronym:

North Atlantic Treaty Organization = NATO

An acronym is a pronounceable word formed from each of the first letters of a descriptive phrase. An acronym is actually a type of abbreviation. Our database contains abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms and we make no distinction between them in our database or on our site. We are more interested in defining "acronyms" for you than we are in trying to properly distinguish between abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms.

Definitions: Please note that so far as I am concerned, an acronym is any string of characters formed from the initial letters of several words (or occasionally from other letters), regardless of whether the result is pronounceable or not.

This is different from the popular — and in my view, mistaken belief common in the USA (and even used by several dictionary definitions) that an acronym is a `word, which has to be pronounceable. An acronym means what it says, it's just made up of the beginnings of words.

Inclusion in this list is not evidence that any particular acronym is an accepted or standard term in its area. In particular, it should not be taken as evidence of `industry-standard' use for the purposes of trademark registration.