this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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Is initialism a type of acronym? Or do they have an umbrella term? Surely, they are the same thing, but if initialism has easily string-able sounds it's an acronym (ex. CPU vs. RAM). And some are even both depending on person saying it, like LED.
Other way around.
An acronym is a type of initialism, which is itself a type of abbreviation.
So acronyms are initialisms where you pronounce the letters like a word (e.g., RAM), initialisms are abbreviations made by taking the initial letters of multiple words and concatenating them regardless of how it's spoken (e.g. FBI for Federal Bureau of Investigation), and an abbreviation is any shortening of a word or phrase into something shorter (e.g., "abbrev." for abbreviation or "US" for United States).
Is US an abbreviation of an initialism (USA)?
I did some research, and apparently, "United States" without "of America" could be a kind of ellipsis. But more likely, it's just an alternative country name. So I think that makes US an initialism (because you pronounce it as [yu-es]) for an alt (bonus info: this is a final clipping, or apocope, of "alternative") name.
Linguistics is such a dirt hut...
Is pronouncing LED like an acronym common? I've never heard it, and it would take me a while to work out what they're on about if they're talking about "lead"
It doesn't happen very often, but I've heard it used that way. It's usually obvious from context, like I think I heard with "OLED vs. LED". And as @[email protected] mentioned, it's used a lot in languages other than English, in my experience in many slavic ones, for example.
Haven't ever heard it in English either, but it's very common in Polish. In Polish LED can even become a proper adjective, e.g. "światło ledowe" (LED light), with the initialism even losing capitalisation