Recently on a Usenet forum, the subject came up of English words where Q is not followed by U (a visitor with a Chinese name wondered why people were always adding a U to his name). One user posted a list of exceptions, pointing out that most were recent borrowings from other languages (qi, qoph, qere/qeri, qintar, qaid, qadi, faqir, qabala, qiviut) but also tranq and qwerty.
I suggested that qwerty is more properly an acronym. My reasoning is that the letters stand only for themselves, not part of the phonetics of any actual word, and so are not subject to the usual rules of English spelling. Others (though not all) have denied that qwerty can be called an acronym because the letters aren't initials. Would love for people here to weigh in on the controversy (especially if they declare my position correct).
(I also snuck in a funny at the same time, saying that qwerty is the English translation of the French word azerty.)
Sorry, Ron, but I have to answer, "No."
I reviewed the OED entry and qwerty is listed as both an adjective and noun. The definition keeps coming back to a 'standard English keyboard'.
Therefore, (until I am corrected by a better argument) I am simply going to call it a 'designation' according to some standard. In this regard, it is much like 503c, 401k, Title I, or Title IX. The first two refer to the sections of the US Tax Code for establishing a form of corporation or company retirement arrangement, respectively. The latter two describe US Law applying to schools with high subsidized lunch percentages or gender equality in programs, respectively. In all four of these cases, there is some standard (US Law) and the entities have been described or named by designation information from the standards. Without the reference to a standard, the 'words' are just a (random) list of characters as is qwerty.
HTH
Emmett
My first sense was to go along with Emmett. If you buy the strict definition of acronym, the letters have to be those that start a series of words. However, one could argue that "Q" is a word that represents a letter. Example: Is Q the letter after P? In that case, a strong argument could be made that Q is the subject of a legitimate English sentence, and hence must be a word.
The other strict requirement for acronyms is that they be pronounceable. No problem there with QWERTY.
I'll be interested to see how others weigh in on this. If you look up the definition of "word" it seems to come down in Ron's favor. The fact that letters are one-letter words doesn't seem to be relevant to the cited definition.
I'm going with Heimhenge. The ability to pronounce qwerty wins me over. It is unlike 503c or 401k or even 1040ez because the letters are not named but pronounced in combination. This quality also separates it from FAQ and that ilk. Almost all dictionaries list each single letter as a word. I admit it is interesting to consider an acromyn made up entirely of single-letter words. But, hey, why not? We make initialisms in which one of the letters is the first letter of another initialism. We've seen dogs with cats! Qs without Us.
I vote yes.
I read this earlier today and thought something similar to Glenn, that each letter has it's own name and is a word in itself. Â However, nearly every letter has a name that is spelled out, usually with two or three letters. Â Q is spelled "cue". Â So my next thought is that if this were truly an acronym it would be "cdeatw" and unpronounceable so not really an acronym. These letters are spelled - "cue", "double-u", "e", "ar", "tee", "wye". Â I can not think of anything that compares to "QWERTY" so I don't know if it is an acronym or not.