A. Blending
B. Acronym
The earliest blends
in English only go back to the 19th century, with wordplay coinages by Lewis
Carroll in Jabberwocky. For example, he introduced to the language slithy,
formed from lithe and slimy) and galumph, (from gallop and triumph
Interestingly galumph has survived as a word in English, but it now seems to
mean 'walk in a stomping, ungainly way'. Some blends that have been around for
quite a while include brunch (breakfast and lunch),
motel (motor hotel),
electrocute (electric and execute), smog (smoke and fog) and cheeseburger
(cheese and hamburger).
A blending is a combination of two or more words to create a
new one, usually by taking the beginning of the other word and the end of the
other one. So new words like spork (spoon
+ fork), fanzine (fan
+ magazine), bromance (brother
+ romance) or Spanglish (Spanish + English) are created.
There are of course other ways to create a blending: for example, you can take
both beginnings of a word (cybernetic + organism → cyborg)
or take a whole word and combine it with a part of another one (guess +
estimate → guesstimate)
(Yousefi 2009. The
most common type of blend is a full word followed by a word part (called a
splinter) as in motorcade (motor + cavalcade). Another
example of combining words, in this case names, is the bleding of celebrity
couple names, such as Brangelina (Brad
+ Angelina) or Bennifer (Ben
+ Jennifer). Sometimes blendings are referred to as portmanteau
words. The term portmanteau was
coined by Lewis Carroll in 1882, when in his book Through
the Looking Glass Humpty Dumpty describes a new word
he uses as follows: "Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. […] You see,
it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed into one word"
(Carroll 1996, 102 - i.e. there are two different words with completely unequal
meanings put together to form a new word with a new meaning.
Examples
and Observations:
motel
(motorway hotel) brunch (breakfast lunch
fridge (freezer refrigerator) smog (smoke fog) stagflation (stagnation and
inflation) spork (spoon and fork)
carjacking (car and hijacking) mocktail(mock and cocktail with no
alcohol) splog (spam and blog)
fake
blog designed to attract hits and raise Google-ranking' britpoperati(Britpop
and literati) 'those knowledgable about current British pop music'.
{agitprop (agitation + propaganda)} alcopop (alcohol + pop)
bash (bat + mash) biopic
(biography + picture
Breathalyzer (breath + analyzer) camcorder (camera + recorder) chexting
(cheating + texting) clash (clap + crash)
cosmeceutical (cosmetic + pharmaceutical)
docudrama(documentary+ drama),faction
(fact + fiction),electrocute (electricity + execute),fanzine (fan + magazine), emoticon
(emote + icon),flare (flame + glare), flirtationship
(flirting + relationship), glimmer (gleam + shimmer), Globish (global +
English), guitarthritis
(guitar + arthritis), infotainment (information + entertainment), moped (motor
+ pedal), palimony (pal + alimony), pornacopia (pornography + cornucopia),
pulsar (pulse + quasar), sexcapade (sex + escapade), sexploitation (sex +
exploitation), sitcom (situation + comedy), slanguage (slang + language). smash
(smack + mash), sportscast (sports + broadcast), stagflation (stagnation +
inflation), staycation (stay home + vacation), telegenic (television +
photogenic), textpectation (text message + expectation), workaholic (work +
alcoholic).
In English, acronyms
pronounced as words may be a 20th-century phenomenon. Linguist David Wilton in
Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends claims that "forming words
from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century
phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with
an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word
is colinderies or colinda, an acronym for the Colonial and Indian Exposition
held in London in that year."
The widespread,
frequent use of acronyms and initialisms across the whole range of registers is
a relatively new linguistic phenomenon in most languages, becoming increasingly
evident since the mid-20th century. As literacy rates rose, and as advances in
science and technology brought with them a constant stream of new (and
sometimes more complex) terms and concepts, the practice of abbreviating terms
became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the
first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not
come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common. By
1943, the term acronym had been used in English to recognize abbreviations (and
contractions of phrases) that were pronounced as words. (It was formed from the
Greek words ἄκρος, akros, "topmost, extreme" and ὄνομα, onoma,
"name.") For example, the army offense of being absent without
official leave was abbreviated to "A.W.O.L." in reports, but when
pronounced as a word ('awol'), it became an acronym. While initial letters are
commonly used to form an acronym, the original definition was a word made from
the initial letters or syllables of other words, for example UNIVAC from
UNIVersal Automatic Computer.
Acronym is way to
form word, it is similar to abbreviation, when each first letter of the source
word is taken and to form new acronym. In English we can find like NASA
(national aeronotics and space administration), VIP (very important person),
NATO (north Atlantic treaty organization), etc. Acronym is forming words from
the initials of a group of words that designate one concept. Usually, but not
always, capitalized. An acronym is pronounced as a word if the consonants and
vowels line up in such a way as to make this possible, otherwise, it is
pronounced as a string of letter names. Acronyms and initialisms are
abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO
and HTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full
pronunciation of what the letters stand for. Of the two words, acronym is the
much more frequently used and known, and many speakers and writers refer to all
abbreviations formed from initial letters as acronyms. However, many others differentiate
between acronyms and initialisms. An acronym is a pronounceable word formed
from the initial letter or letters of the constituent words, such as NATO. An
initialism is an abbreviation pronounced as the names of the individual letters,
and is formed only from the initial letter of constituent words, such as TLA.
This distinction is supported by many dictionary definitions, but not by all.
Although the term
acronym is widely used to describe any abbreviation formed from initial
letters, some dictionaries define acronym to mean "a word" in its
original sense, while some others include additional senses attributing to
acronym the same meaning as that of initialism. The distinction, when made,
hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, or as a string of
letters. According to the first definition found in dictionaries, examples of
acronyms are NATO (/ˈneɪtoʊ/), scuba (/ˈskuːbə/), and radar (/ˈreɪdɑr/), while
examples of initialisms are FBI (/ˌɛfˌbiːˈaɪ/) and HTML (/ˌeɪtʃˌtiːˌɛmˈɛl/). There
is no agreement on what to call abbreviations whose pronunciation involves the
combination of letter names and words, such as JPEG (/ˈdʒeɪpɛɡ/) and MS-DOS (/ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/).
There are also some disagreements as abbreviations that some speakers pronounce
as letters and others pronounce as a word. For example, the terms URL and IRA
can be pronounced as individual letters: /ˌjuːˌɑrˈɛl/ and /ˌaɪˌɑrˈeɪ/,
respectively; or as a single word: /ˈɜrl/ and /ˈaɪərə/, respectively. Such
constructions, however—regardless of how they are pronounced—if formed from
initials, may be identified as initialisms without controversy.
The spelled-out form of an
acronym or initialism (that is, what it stands for) is called its expansion.
Comparing a few examples of each
types of acronym:
a.
Pronounced
as a word, containing only initial letters
AIDS: acquired immune deficiency
syndrome
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
Scuba: self-contained underwater
breathing apparatus
Laser: Light Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation
b.
Pronounced
as a word, containing non-initial letters
Amphetamine:
alpha-methyl-phenethylamine
Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei
(secret state police)
Interpol: International Criminal
Police Organization
Nabisco: National Biscuit Company
c.
Pronounced
as a word, containing a mixture of initial and non-initial letters
Necco: New England Confectionery
Company
Radar: radio detection and
ranging
d.
Pronounced
as a word or names of letters, depending on speaker or context
FAQ: ([fæk] or ef-a-cue)
frequently asked question
IRA: When used for Individual
Retirement Account, can be pronounced as letters (i-ar-a) or as a word [ˈaɪrə].
SAT(s): ([sæt] or ess-a-tee)
(previously) Scholastic Achievement (or Aptitude) Test(s)(US) or Standard
Assessment Test(s) (UK), now claimed not to stand for anything.[11]
SQL: ([siːkwəl] or ess-cue-el)
Structured Query Language.
e.
Pronounced
as a combination of names of letters and a word
CD-ROM: (cee-dee-[rɒm]) Compact
Disc read-only memory
IUPAC: (i-u-[pæk]) International
Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
JPEG:
(jay-[pɛɡ]) Joint Photographic Experts Group
SFMOMA: (ess-ef-[moʊmə]) San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art
f.
Pronounced
only as the names of letters
BBC: British Broadcasting
Corporation
OEM: Original Equipment
Manufacturer
USA: The United States of America
g.
Pronounced
as the names of letters but with a shortcut
AAA: (triple A) American
Automobile Association; abdominal aortic aneurysm; anti-aircraft artillery;
Asistencia Asesoría Administración
(three As) Amateur Athletic
Association
IEEE: (I triple E) Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
NAACP: (N double A C P) National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NCAA: (N C double A or N C two A
or N C A A) National Collegiate Athletic Association
h.
Shortcut
incorporated into name
3M: (three M) originally
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
E3: (E three) Electronic
Entertainment Exposition
W3C: (W three C)
World Wide Web Consortium
C4ISTAR: (C four I star) Command,
Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target
Acquisition, and Reconnaissance.
i.
Pseudo-acronyms,
which consist of a sequence of characters that, when pronounced as intended,
invoke other, longer words with less typing (see also Internet slang)
CQ: cee-cue for "seek
you", a code used by radio operators
IOU: i-o-u for "I owe
you" (a true acronym would be IOY)
K9: kay-nine for
"canine", used to designate police units utilizing dogs
Q8: cue-eight for
"Kuwait"
j.
Initialisms
whose last abbreviated word is often redundantly included anyway
ATM machine: Automated Teller
Machine machine
HIV virus: Human Immunodeficiency
Virus virus
PIN number: Personal
Identification Number number
LCD display: Liquid Crystal
Display display.
