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List of acronyms and initialisms

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This is a list of acronyms and initialisms.

For the purpose of this list, an acronym is an abbreviation that is pronounced as a series of constituent letters, and an initialism is an abbreviation whose pronunciation is wholly or partly the names of constituent letters. Also, a pseudo-blend is an abbreviation that is not really an acronym, nor an initialism nor a true portmanteau word, usually due to extra or omitted letters.

(a) = acronym in the example: SARS - (a) Severe acute respiratory syndrome
(i) = initialism in the example: CD - (i) Compact disc
(p) = pseudo-blend in the example: UNIFEM - (p) United Nations Development Fund for Women

Add new entries here

Please add your own, in a quasi-dictionary order with lowercase treated the same as uppercase. This means that only alphanumeric characters are significant to determine the order, and that lowercase letters occupy the same ordering position as uppercase. For example: Algol appears before ALS. This differs from a strict ASCII ordering.

0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Non-alphabetic

0-9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Dubious entries

Words that may not be acronyms, but (humorous) folk etymology says that they are, some of these are backronyms:

See also

External links