Acronyms vs. Initialisms

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. My name is Jeff. I’m calling from Hawaii.

I have a couple questions about acronyms, initialisms, and possibly even macronyms.

Okay.

Wow.

I work in the joint military environment, and I meet a lot of people from the Army and the Marine Corps

And Air Force and different services. I’m in the Navy, so I’ve been exposed to a bunch of new acronyms.

I hadn’t really heard a lot.

And while we were having this discussion, I stopped one of my friends and said,

I don’t know if that’s an acronym so much as initialism.

And he hadn’t heard that.

So I wanted to ask, first of all, if maybe I’m being too academic about splitting up acronyms and initialisms.

Oh, no, I don’t think you can ever be too academic about splitting up acronyms and initialisms.

That’s great.

But then once we got into this discussion, I was asked, well, what about like RADAR and AWOL,

Where they aren’t actually English words, but we use them as acronyms.

We’ve actually made a word up out of the abbreviation.

Well, then let’s clarify our terms just for a second.

There are two things to say here.

One is the lexicographers and the linguists tend to be very specific

About the meaning of acronym and the meaning of initialism,

Whereas the general public doesn’t.

And sometimes this is where differences of opinion arrive.

It sounds like you’re falling on the linguist and lexicographer camp, right?

I’ve been listening to you guys too much, so I believe you.

Oh, yeah. We’re like a bad disease. Everyone catches us.

So initialisms are something like CBS or IBM, where it can’t be pronounced as a word, right?

You say the names of the letters in order to say the thing.

Right.

But acronyms are things like NASA, where the letters can be pronounced as a word, right?

Right. So then you’re agreeing with me that radar is actually an acronym.

Here’s the key. Here’s the trick. Here’s the trick.

Martha will agree with me on this. I know she will.

They’re both initialisms, but only the ones that can be pronounced as words are acronyms.

Initialisms are the umbrella category, and acronyms are a subset of initialisms.

Right.

And then, again, am I being too flip to use macronym? Is that not academic enough?

Well, macronym is not an established term in linguistics or in lexicography,

And we should define that too, Martha.

That’s an acronym made of other acronyms, right?

Right, and I have an example, actually, a synthetic aperture radar,

Where the initialism, I guess, radar is inside of the acronym.

And what is the acronym?

What is the macronym then?

S-A-R, SAR.

SAR, gotcha.

Yeah, that’s great.

That’s a good example.

Well, thank you very much.

You’ve been very helpful and, I think, decisive in my question.

Excellent.

Glad to hear it.

Thank you so much for your call, Jeff.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Aloha.

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