initialism

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English initial

Proto-Indo-European *-id-

Proto-Indo-European *-yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti

Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō

Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)

Proto-Indo-European *-mos

Proto-Indo-European *-mós

Ancient Greek -μός (-mós)

Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós)der.

English -ism

English initialism

From initial + -ism.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪˈnɪʃəlɪzəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

initialism (plural initialisms)

1. (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.

2. (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

See acronym § Usage notes.

Derived terms

• orphan initialism

Translations

term pronounced letter by letter

• Catalan: sigla (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 首字母縮略詞 / 首字母缩略词 (shǒuzìmǔ suōlüècí)

• Danish: initialord n, initialforkortelse c
• Dutch: initiaalwoord (nl) n
• Finnish: kirjainlyhenne, initialismi
• French: sigle (fr) m
• German: related: Initialwort (de) n, Akronym (de) n, Buchstabenwort (de) n
• Greek: αρκτικόλεξο (el) n (arktikólexo)
• Hungarian: betűszó (hu)
• Italian: sigla (it) f, abbreviatura (it) f, acronimo (it) m
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: initialord (no) n

  Nynorsk: initialord n

• Polish: literowiec m, skrótowiec literowy m
• Portuguese: sigla (pt) f
• Russian: инициа́льная аббревиату́ра f inan (iniciálʹnaja abbreviatúra)
• Spanish: sigla (es) f

See also

• Category:English shortenings

• abbreviation
• abecedism
• acronym
• TLA

Further reading

• initialism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “initialism”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “initialism”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “initialism, acronym, abbreviation, shortening, abecedism”, in Google Books Ngram Viewer.