Coming up on Word Matters, all about abbreviations.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea, Peter Sakalowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
When is an abbreviation an acronym?
And when is an acronym also an initialism?
I'll explain it all.
Among the different variety of lexical items in the English language,
we have a category called abbreviations.
And abbreviations are kind of word wannabes, right?
They are not words.
They are a shortened version of a word.
We shorten it for convenience or for fun.
And there are among abbreviations,
there's the kind where just random letters get taken out or not so random really.
Like the word APT for apartment or APPT for appointment.
Sometimes they have a period after them, sometimes they do not.
And then we also have acronyms and initialisms.
Acronym is the broader category,