Bacronyms

Perhaps you have heard of bacronyms (also spelled backronym) . This word breezed onto my radar screen about a year ago but at the time it didn't stick. I came across the term again this week while I worked on a wiki project.

Bacronym has multiple meanings, but the one I find interesting describes the case where a word is turned into an acronym by creating a phrase out of the letters in the word. Here are two examples.

SOS was chosen as a distress signal because the Morse code is unmistakable and easy to transmit. Three dots, three dashes, and three dots. SOS was never meant to mean save our ship, save our souls, or send out succor. These are bacronyms.

Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning quick or fast. Wiki has been adopted by web designers to describe a simplified mark up language. It permits anyone who accesses a wiki web site to contribute or modify content. The most prominent example of a wiki in action is Wikipedia. Some have claimed that wiki is an acronym standing for "what I know is." Wiki is a word, "what I know is" represents a bacronym.

Bacronyms are an interesting language phenomenon. If you know of others, feel free to share them here.