What's the difference between acronym and abbreviation?

Answer 1

An acronym refers to a word where every letter stands for a word, like FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation. An abbreviation is a shortening of a word or two words like coz for because and won't for will not.

Answer 2

An acronym is another name for the same thing. An abbreviation is a shortened form of the word. I suppose one could be the other.

Answer 3

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and LED, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. Of the two words, acronym is the much more frequently used and known; and some dictionaries, speakers, and writers use it to describe any abbreviation formed from initial letters.

Abbreviation (from Latin brevis "short") is strictly a shorter form of a word, but more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent them for the sake of brevity. For example, the word "abbreviation" can be abbreviated as "abbr." or "abbrev." In a dictionary with no abbreviation section, AUTM (variation of ATM) would come right after "authorize".

Answer 4

An acronym is an abbreviation created from the first (or more) letters in a phrase or a word. Ex. NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or a phrase. It usually contains letters within the word or phrase, but not always. ex. Dr for Doctor

Answer 5

an acronym is an abbreviation that can be pronounced as a word, esp when the acronym comes to be more recognised or more closely associated with the thing in question than the fully spelled out expression the acronym represents

Answer 6

An acronym uses the initials of a phrase to make a new word--by definition (Websters's Ninth) it should be pronouced as a word rather than pronouncing the letters. (So AIDS and UNICEF are acronyms, but NFL is not.)

An abbreviation is any shortening of a word or phrase. I think acronyms also count as abbreviations, as do Dr., ***'t, and NFL.

Edit: Prudish Yahoo! didn't like my abbreviation for "assistant".

Answer 7

an acronym is a phrase that has every word abbreviated buy its starting letter. an example is S.C.U.B.A. it stands for "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus" (bet you didn't know that was a acronym) also colleges like UNC is university of north carolina

an abbreviation is a word that has been shortened. Examples are
the 50 states
V.A. is virginia
S.C. is south carolina

Answer 8

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and LED, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. Of the two words, acronym is the much more frequently used and known; and some dictionaries, speakers, and writers use it to describe any abbreviation formed from initial letters.This is a contentious point, however,and other sources differentiate between the two terms, restricting acronym to pronounceable words formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the constituent words—such as NATO (pronounced), from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or radar (pronounced from radio detection and ranging—and restricting initialism to abbreviations pronounced as the names of the individual letters The word alphabetism is sometimes used to describe these "letter name" abbreviations.[10]

Answer 9

An acronym is a word derived from the FIRST letter (or FIRST few letters) of multiple words. For example, RADAR is an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging.

An abbreviation as a varied assortment of letters within a single word as a shortened expression of that same single word (such as "St." for street or "Blvd." for boulevard).

Answer 10

An acronym takes the first letter from every word of a phrase, like LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), whereas an abbreviation uses a shortened form of a word, like Dr. (doctor or drive), Ave. (avenue), or Rd (road).