So I have my qualifying exams next Thursday (what am I doing HERE, then? Trying to avoid panic), and since I’m nearly there, this is bugging me. Does the acronym/ abbreviation ABD, always explained as “All But Disseration,” really originate there or is it another old Latin-root abbreviation that has had a popularized English version attached (like A.D., which until I was 15 thought came from “after death”)? I can’t find any contradicting evidence but I’m having a hard time believing “all but done” or “all but dissertation” has become an official term in Latin-lovin’ academia.
Well the dictionary doesn’t list anything else. Unlike AD, or QED, I’ve never heard ABD used in any official context. You’re saying it is?
Job postings will many times say ‘ABD fine’.
Since I doubt high-hat academics would deign to come up with a proper Latinate term for those reprobates who don’t finish up a dissertation, my WAG is that it has always meant nothing more than “All But Dissertation.”
The OED confirms my suspicion, that the initialism (not an acronym) ABD was first recorded as being used in 1960. I suspect the need for such a term arose from the huge increases in the number of people pursuing higher education after the 1940s, which opened the academic gates to people who wouldn’t have been there otherwise – and, concomitantly, the number of folks who didn’t (or couldn’t) finish a thesis must have gone up as well.
My university, for example, uses it as a shorter way of saying “advanced to candidacy” so in the catalogues and other official things “ABD status” is used to talk about library privileges and tuition waivers and such, and we have an official “Pre-ABD research fellowship”, etc.
Please forgive my ignorance, peepthis. I see why ABD is an initialism, but why is it not an acronym as well?
Acronyms are WORDS, which can be spoken without unhinging your tongue. LASER, ZIP, NATO, and UNICEF are acronyms. CIA, ABD, and NRC are not.
Well, ABD is a word. But an acronym is necessarily a word that’s spelled like it’s pronounced?
I suppose I wasn’t entirely clear. An initialism, as Nametag explained, is not pronounced as it’s spelled; rather, it is said as its sequence of letters.
However, initialisms are a specific type of acronym. Therefore one could call ABD an acronym, but it would be more correct to call it an initialism.
Just to clarify–your history of the term suggests ABD is used as some kind of sneer against people who leave doctoral programs after having passed their exams but without dissertating.* As I hear it used, ABD describes a phase of the doctoral process–that’s why you see positions advertised for people who have just finished their doctorates or are ABD. The expectation/requirement is that the person hired will finish writing that pesky disseration.
*Of course, some people do leave at this stage.