模倣子 backronisms

 A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The word is a blend of back and acronym.

An acronym is a word derived from the initial letters of the words of a phrase, such as the word radar, constructed from "radio detection and ranging". ^{By contrast, a backronym is "an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words, either to create a memorable name or as a fanciful explanation of a word's origin."}

For example, the United States Department of Justice's Amber Alert program was named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old abducted and murdered in 1996; ^{but officials later publicized the backronym "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response"}

Actually, i think I’ve heard of this, but thanks for putting it back on the playlist. 

I feel like I should be able to rattle off a few good examples of my own, but nothing leaps to mind. 

I guess words like SCUBA 🤿 (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus) are just cases like RADAR where somebody wanted something pronounceable and memorable, but wasn’t shoehorning a meaning into an existing word/acronym. 

Is there a name for that? Coming up with a pronounceable acronym? Like SUSPECNA?

And from the Wikipedia article I ran into Backronym

The term quango or QUANGO (less often QuANGOor QANGO) is a description of an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies. The term was originally a shortening of "Quasi-NGO", where NGO is the acronym for a non-government organization.

In its pejorative use, it has been widely applied to public bodies of various kinds, and a variety of backronymshave been used to make the term consistent with this expanded use. The most popular have been "Quasi-autonomous national government organization" and "Quasi-autonomous non-government organization", often with the acronym modified to "qango" or "QANGO".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango?wprov=sfti1

That’s really interesting. 

I can almost think of one or two more. It’s like a meta-acronym, where one bit is an acronym, which makes up often one letter of a new acronym, but that’s almost something else again. 

I’ll try to recall some good examples. Does the fact that I can’t mean my brain 🧠 is going soft? I think I could’ve rattled things off once upon a time. 

I think the computer industry has a few. 

Not a particularly good example, but a guy name Bourne wrote the first shell 🐚 (I won’t attempt to explain what that is except to say the it’s a generic scripting and user interface which you have to run in order to log in or do anything), and it was called “sh” or “/bin/sh”. There was another shell written called “C shell” (“C” being a language) and it was named “csh”. The point being that if it had been a Pascal language interface, it would’ve been named “pascalsh” or “passh”. 

Anyway, the punchline. An enhancement (now used everywhere) was made to Bourne shell, which was named “bash” or “Bourne-again shell.”

GNU is a Unix open source movement. It stands for “Gnu’s Not Unix”, an infinitely recursive acronym rather like “GoD” Is “God of Djinn 🧞‍♂️ “.

Anyway, one common utility, replacing the old C compiler is the GNU version, the GNU C compiler, or “gcc”. 

“troff” is an early typesetting utility whosename came from the expression "to run off a copy". No attendant 🐖 pig-related utilities that I know off. 

The big typesetting utility TeX, was apparently taken from the Greek 🇬🇷 “TeX” or “tech” and one enhancement by Lamport was called “LaTeX” (though apparently Lamport won’t admit to the etymology) and there’s also a version called “ConTeXt” but I don’t know what that one’s for. 

Oh, this one is fun. The lexical analyzer utility is “lex” and the compiler building tool is “yacc” or “Yet Another Compiler Compiler” so of course the GNU version of “yacc” is named “bison”. 

I think one can imagine that the internal library calls are rife with this sort of thing, but I did my system-level programming during the System V / Berkeley era, which, while not a pun desert 🌵 doubtless nothing compared to the present. 

I did write a security system (the “priest” program) into which I crammed as many catholic jokes and references as I could find, but nothing that FDR would consign to backronymy, before Congress or elsewhere. 

And of course we have “gmail” for “Google e-mail”

I know there are some much better ones (to do with government or well-known inventions), so I shall slog on a-pondering!

Thanks!