Backronym
A backronym is a word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what linguists call back-formation. Some backronyms are alternative interpretations of real acronyms, such as GNVQ and LISP."Backronym" is a portmanteau of back and acronym. Discovering backronyms is a common form of wordplay among hackers.
Some examples of backronyms include:
- Acme - The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry (from the Road Runner cartoons), commonly backronymed to "A (or American) Company Making (or Manufacturing) Everything".
- Mung - Green gram, a kind of pulse (Phaseolus Mungo), grown for food in India, commonly backronymed as "Mash Until No Good". Later it had become "Mung Until No Good", making it a rare example of a recursive backronym.
- Ahimsa - A religious concept which advocates non-violence and a respect for all life, Sanskrit for avoidance of himsa, or injury to sentient beings. It is commonly backronymed as "Abstinence from animal products, Harmlessness with reverence for life, Integrity of thought, word, and deed, Mastery over oneself, Service to humanity, nature, and creation, and Advancement of understanding and truth".
- Arby's - The Arby's chain of restaurants was named after its founders; in the early 1980s the company launched an advertising campaign that used the backronym "America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir!"
- GNVQ - Generally Not Very Qualified.
- NASCAR - Non Athletic Sports Created Around Rednecks.
- Pig - When "pig" came into use as derogatory slang for a policeman, some of its targets retaliated by adopting the phrase "Pride, Integrity, Guts".
- RESPECT The Unity Coalition, a left wing political party in the UK where RESPECT was later explained officially as Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community and Trade Unionism, or among its opponents as Recently Expelled Scottish Politician who Endorses Communist Tyranny[1].
- Order of St Michael and St George, a British order of chivalry, where the ranks (bottom to top) are taken to be: CMG Call me God; KCMG Kindly call me God; and GCMG God calls me God.
- Airlines:
- BOAC - Better On A Camel; Bit Of A Charlie.
- Lufthansa - Let Us Find The Hostess, As No Steward Available. A more vulgar version is Let Us Fuck The Hostesses And Not Say Anything.
- Qantas - Queer And Nice Types of Air Steward
- Sabena - Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again.
- TWA - Try Walking Across; Teeny Weeny Airlines; Third World Airlines
- TACA - Take A Chance Airlines (TACA is also (intentionally) an acronym for Transportes Aéreos Centroamericanos', or Central American Air Transport'')
- Sosa - Stay at hOme, Stay Alive
- Delta - Divert Everyone's Luggage To Atlanta
- Cars:
- Ford - also known as Found On Road Dead; Fix Or Repair Daily; or Fuckin' Old Re-built Dodge and originally it was First On Race Day. An example of a reverse backronym is Driver Returning On Foot.
- Fiat - Fix It Again Tomorrow; Fix It Again Tony; Futile Italian Attempt at Transportation; or Fucking Idiot Asshole Towncar
- Honda - Had One, Never Did Again
- Pontiac - Poor Old Nigger Thinks It's a Cadillac
- Color television standards:
- Telephone standards
- ISDN - I Still Don't Need It; It Still Does Nothing; I Smell Dollars Now
- ISDN - I Still Don't Need It; It Still Does Nothing; I Smell Dollars Now
- Computing:
- Ada - A computer programming language named after Ada Lovelace, with humorously intended backronym of Another 'Darn' Acronym.
- APL - A Perfect Language, A Preposterous Language, and others.
- EMACS - Escape, Meta, Alt, Control, Shift
- IBM - Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement
- Linux - Linux Is Not UniX; LINus' UniX
- LISP - Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses (alternatively Silly/Stupid Parentheses)
- Microsoft - My Incompetent Computer Randomly Operates Sensibly/Stupidly On Floating Point Tasks
- WINdOwS - WINdOWs Is Not an Operating System (it is actually a recursive backronym)
- Macintosh - Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs.
- PCMCIA - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
- Perl - A high level scripting language common on Unix-like systems, with the common backronym of "Practical Extraction and Report Language", but jokingly referred to as the "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister". Both expansions appear on the man page. More recently, "Parse Every Random Line", in honor of the extensions proposed for Perl 6.