What Is the Difference Between an Abbreviation and an Acronym?
Do you wonder what is the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym? An abbreviation and an acronym sound as though they are similar things. After all, they are both shortened versions of something else. Both can often be represented as a series of letters. In fact, most people are unable to tell the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym. For example, which of the following is an abbreviation and which is an acronym: Sept. or ASAP. If you aren't sure, check out the following article for an explanation of the question "What is the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym?"
What Is an Abbreviation
An abbreviation, according to the dictionary, is defined as:
- a making shorter
- the fact or state of being made shorter
- a shortened form of a word or phrase, as N.Y. for New York, Mr. for Mister, lb for pound, ctn for cotangent
In other words, any shortened version of another word can be an abbreviation. There are millions of common abbreviations used every day. For example, when you write out your address, most people write "St. or Ave." instead of "street" or "avenue." When you write the date, you may abbreviate both the day of the week (Mon, Tues., Wed., Thurs., Fri., Sat., and Sun.) and the month of the year (Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.). There are also tons of industry specific abbreviations that you may be unaware of unless you are in the industry, such as medical abbreviations or dental abbreviations.
What Is an Acronym
An acronym, according to the dictionary, is defined as:
- a word formed from the first (or first few) letters of a series of words, as radar, from radio
- detecting and ranging
Therefore, an acronym, technically, must spell out another word. However, this rule isn't always rigidly enforced. For example, ASAP is an acronym although the word "asap" is not in the dictionary.
Still, the first letters of each of the words "As Soon As Possible" are used to form the acronym ASAP.
Like abbreviations, acronyms are used daily, and most people can interpret the meaning of common acroynms without much thought. For example, you go to the ATM instead of to the automatic teller machine, or you give your time zone as EST, CST or PST instead of as Eastern Standard Time, Central Standard Time or Pacific Standard Time.
What Is the Difference Between an Abbreviation and an Acronym
As you can see, there is a great deal of overlap between abbreviations and acronyms. In fact, generally, every single acronym is an abbreviation. This is the case because the acronym is a shortened form of a word or phrase. However, not every abbreviation is an acronym, since some abbreviations- those made from words- are not new words formed from the first few letters of a series of words.
For example, look at the word New York. NY is the acronym for New York. Since this acronym is a shortened version of the phrase, by definition the acronym is also an abbreviation.
This does not necessarily work the other way. Shortening the word "Avenue" to "Ave." is an abbreviation, because it is the shortened version of the word. However, it is not an acronym since the word AVE is not a new word comprised of the first few letters of a phrase.
Commonly Used Acronyms and Abbreviations
Both acronyms and abbreviations have become even more commonplace with the advent of text messaging and IM-ing. These electronic activities, which prize brevity over grammatical correctness, have given rise to a series of hundreds, if not thousands, of new acronyms and abbreviations that did not exist before the computer age. For example, words like BRB (be right back), LOL (laughing out loud), and ROFL (rolling on floor laughing), are all new acronyms that were derived from computer lingo. All of these new acronyms, designed to make texting easier and save the thumbs from carpal tunnel syndrome, are also abbreviations because they are all shortened versions of phrases that IM-ers were using frequently. For more information read our Guide to Internet Abbreviations.