As an aside, I have found it interesting that common Hebrew uses a ton of initialisms, and practically all of them are sounded out as acronyms.
Well known ones in the West are Mossad, Knesset, e.g.
Just today a friend, who works for ESRI, told me that had to attend meetings to announce that “ezri” was verboten, ostensibly because spelling out the initials sounded more science-y.
I always thought that a group of words whose first letters formed another word was the form of an acrostic.
This is actually a backronym
Great to know. Thanks!
Here’s an ideal (and memorable) way to imagine an acrostic:
Acrostics are hidden; you won’t notice them until you look.
I work with their products & their support folks a bit.
My understanding was that the ess-ree or ezz-ree pronunciation was historically verboten on pain of banishment. Only eee-ess-are-eye was permitted. Up until around late 2009 when the PTB there admitted defeat and now accept ezz-ree as tolerable, but to be discouraged in official marketing materials, presentations, etc.
The Devil’s DP dictionary points out that every IT project should include a good acronymicist; becuase without a good acronym, a project is doomed.
A field of specialty is TLA’s, or Three-Letter Acronyms.