Pseudo-acronym
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A pseudo-acronym, also sometimes referred to as an anti-acronym, is an acronym which doesn't stand for anything, or pretend to:
- The term is used for abbreviations and names that appear to be acronyms but cannot officially be expanded. The instant messaging system called ICQ, for instance, was chosen as a play on the words "I Seek You". The Black Sabbath song "N.I.B." is merely the word "nib" spelt as an acronym [1] (http://www.black-sabbath.com/faq/faq11.htm#faq11040); similarly the song title "A.M.E.R.I.K.A." is typographic rather than acronymic. Some argue that DVD became a pseudo-acronym when its original expansion – Digital Video Disc – became inadequate; officially, it is now not an acronym at all, but is generally taken as being for Digital Versatile Disc.
- Some pseudo-acronyms still officially stand for something, but phrases which paradoxically deny their own existence. This is especially common among computer programs, especially UNIX programs. For instance, JINI is said to stand for Jini Is Not Initials. Pine, a common email reader, stands for Pine Is Not Elm (Elm is another mail reader). Wine, a port of windows DLLs to unix stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. LAME.exe, an mp3 encoder, ironically stands for Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder. These are also recursive acronyms - ones where part of the acronym expands to the original acronym. Since such an acronym can never be fully expanded, some refer to all such acronyms as pseudo- or anti-acronyms.
→ See also: initialism, apronym, backronym