Thursday, April 24, 2008

Backronyms

Never knew there was a word to describe this. An acronym is a abbreviation. A backronym on the other hand is a phrase constructed from a previously existing word or abbreviation.

An example: A Spool in computers is a buffer area used for data transmission between a computer and a peripheral of lower speed. People constructed the phrase Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line based on the believed-to-be acronym Spool. Its the inverse (the reverse direction) of developing an acronym.

I thought this was quite interesting...

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