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Sometimes, we receive mail from language purist that (correctly)
point out that what we collect here are not, for the most part,
acronyms but abbreviations. Let's take a look at the definitions
(from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, http://www.webster.com):
acronym:
a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial
letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts
of a compound term.
abbreviation:
a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the
whole (amt is an abbreviation for amount).
The fact is, in the information technology context people tend to
use the term "acronym" in a broad sense, i.e. encompassing
abbreviations. As an empirical demonstration, people who come to
this site using a search engine and searching for "acronyms"
account for nearly 99% of all visits originating from a search.
When in this site you encounter the word "acronym" we mean any
term that results from consecutively taking some letters from a
definition.
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