Fun fact: Most of the acronyms on our acronym page are not!

Acronyms — and Abbreviations!

So when are acronyms not acronyms?

I ran into a YouTube short from Neil deGrasse Tyson where he “spelled” this out (sorry). You can view it here.

It turns out an acronym is a series of letters that spell something that can be pronounced. IBM is an abbreviation, not an acronym. NASA is an acronym for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is admittedly a mouthful.

So, looking at what is now our Acronyms and Abbreviations page, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems with an abbreviation that is often spoken as a word, ADAS and becomes an acronym. However, ADS, AEB and AFL hardly roll off the tongue and are abbreviations of Active Damper System, Autonomous or Automatic Emergency Braking and Adaptive Forward or Front Lighting, respectively.

Looking further, its clear that the vast majority of our entries are in fact abbreviations. We did find ECO and ECON, both of which are commonly used as acronyms for ECO(N)omy operation. ECS, ECT and ECU and mothing more than abbreviations.

A curiosity from the world of baseball if the RBI or un batted in. This is an abbreviation until an announcer refers to a “ribee”, clearly ignoring what would have to be a change the abbreviation’s spelling.

Finally, he notes that the word acronym was actually invented after WWII to handle the abbreviations that can be spoken as a separate category.

Our acronyms and abbreviations page can be found here.

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