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Sometimes these acronyms' expanded meanings made sense, but most of the time they were words incongruously crammed together for the mere purpose of obtaining a catchy acronym, traditionally a heroic sounding one for the good guys and an appropriately menacing one for the bad guys.
acronym = an abbreviation pronounced as if it were a word, e.g., SARS = severe acute respiratory syndrome, pronounced to rhyme with cars initialism = an abbreviation pronounced wholly or partly using the names of its constituent letters, e.g., CD = compact disc , pronounced cee dee
These are not merely catchy sayings. Even though some sources may identify a phrase as a catchphrase, this list is for those that meet the definition given in the lead section of the catchphrase article and are notable for their widespread use within the culture. This list is distinct from the list of political catchphrases.
K – Is used as an abbreviation for 1,000. For example, $225K would be understood to mean $225,000, and $3.6K would be understood to mean $3,600. Multiple K's are not commonly used to represent larger numbers. In other words, it would look odd to use $1.2KK to represent $1,200,000. Ke – Is used as an
A three-letter acronym (TLA), or three-letter abbreviation, is as the phrase suggests an abbreviation consisting of three letters. The abbreviation for TLA, TLA, has a special status among abbreviations and to some is humorous since abbreviations that are three-letters long are very common and TLA is, in fact, a TLA. TLA is autological.
The term is typically spelled out in lowercase letters, but there's no acronym police who will ticket you for typing it in either all uppercase letters or just capitalizing the s.
initialism = an abbreviation pronounced wholly or partly using the names of its constituent letters, e.g., CD = compact disc, pronounced cee dee; pseudo-blend = an abbreviation whose extra or omitted letters mean that it cannot stand as a true acronym, initialism, or portmanteau (a word formed by combining two or more words).
It's also more accurate to say that an abbreviation is a shortening of a word or phrase (e.g., "blog" is a four-letter abbreviation for "web log"), whereas an acronym uses the initial letters of multiple words to form a single word. Obviously, it's the second form being discussed in this entry.