by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
Where would we be without acronyms?
Government, finance, industry, technology and even sports have added thousands of “words” to the common vernacular. Actually, acronyms aren’t exactly words, but representations of sequences of words. That doesn’t mean they haven’t become part of our language.
Look up “acronym” in the dictionary and you’ll find something along the lines of, “a pronounceable name made up of a series of initial letters or parts of words.” Even acronym itself can be an acronym. For instance: Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning, Alphabetic Collocation Reducing Or Numbing Your Memory, A Contrived Reduction Of Nomenclature Yielding Mnemonics, Alphanumeric Code for Remembering Odd Names You Make up, A Crazy Reminder Of Names You Misplaced and A Clever reorganization Nudges Your Memory.
According to James Robinson, a self-confessed “acronymphomaniac” and professor of history at Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) the whole thing started when former President Franklin Roosevelt gave America the “New Deal.” It spawned a host of government agencies that soon began to go by the newly invented form of shorthand.
Among the first was the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program. Quite a few of the New Deal initiatives are still present and carry some of the most familiar acronyms. There’s the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Then there’s the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Fannie Mae, which is technically the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), even though it’s never referred to as such.
Robinson said the next wave of acronyms can be attributed to the U.S. military during World War II. One of the first, “RADAR,” has become as much a word as an acronym even though it represents “Radio Detection and Ranging.” Soon to follow was SONAR (Sonic Navigation and Ranging), NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) and AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System).
Other acronyms have also come to be essentially words like LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) and a familiar computer term, SPOOL (Shared Peripheral Operations Online).
Robinson also said the first computer was developed by the U.S. Army to calculate artillery shots and soon had its own acronym: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer).
Robinson also has a background in data processing and commented: “If you put three people in data processing in the same room the first thing they do is come up with an acronym for the group.”
One of his all-time favorites in that category is actually a pair of acronyms.
“I remember when we were tasked to come up with a mnemonic that would be used across different data centers. We came up with two: WAXON (Workload Allocated Cross-system Online Non-VSAM) and WAXOV (Workload Allocated Cross-system Online VSAM).” The group was apparently also fans of “The Karate Kid.”
Acronyms can also be a tool for advertising and marketing. In broadcast advertising, time is money and having a method to quickly identify a product or service can be an advantage for copywriters, said Chris Conte, creative group head at The Dalton Agency.
Acronyms, he said, are “time savers and space savers.”
“In a radio spot, you have 30 seconds to get the message across,” he added. “On a billboard you’re limited to seven or eight words. It’s about simplifying the message and making it easy to remember.”
Both Conte and Robinson agreed the number of acronyms entering the language will only increase. Born of technology, their numbers will increase with new devices and processes.
“The way people communicate is becoming more truncated. It’s getting faster every day and acronyms save time and characters. People are also multitasking,” said Conte. “They’re being asked to digest more than one message at a time. Acronyms help by reducing the amount of information contained in each message.”
Robinson sees more of the same, too.
“There are definitely more acronyms on the horizon,” predicted Robinson, who said he has considered for years taking on the task of compiling and publishing a dictionary of acronyms.
“But I doubt it will ever happen,” he said, “because there would be no way to keep it up to date.”
Some of City government’s most often-used acronyms:
Selected federal government acronyms:
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