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initialism
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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English
Etymology
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɪˈnɪʃəlɪzəm/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
initialism (plural initialisms)
- (linguistics) A term formed from the initial letters of several words or parts of words, which is itself pronounced letter by letter.
- Synonym: alphabetism
- Hypernyms: acronym (broad sense) < abbreviation (broad sense) < word (broad sense)
- Hyponym: orphan initialism
- Coordinate term: acronym (strict sense)
- The term BBC is an initialism for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
- (linguistics) The process of forming words or terms using initial letters of other words.
- 2015, James Lambert, “Lexicography as a teaching tool: A Hong Kong case study”, in Lan Li, Jamie McKeown, Liming Liu, editors, Dictionaries and corpora: Innovations in reference science. Proceedings of ASIALEX 2015 Hong Kong, Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, page 146:
- The next most frequent source language was English, with neologistic compounds accounting for 15 etymologies, with 9 other English-based terms from a variety of word formation processes such as initialism and semantic extension.
Usage notes
Derived terms
Translations
term pronounced letter by letter
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See also
Further reading
initialism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - “initialism”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- “initialism”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “initialism, acronym, abbreviation, shortening, abecedism”, in Google Books Ngram Viewer.
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