Why do people engage in backronyms? Is it an attempt to be clever?
Also, does Congress often engage in backronyms? I thought they (and the military) come up with names which aim to be both descriptive and easy to remember. Do they work backwards from an acronym that was already present before they assigned meaning to each letter?
Sometimes, it’s rather contrived and clunky but other times, like Humvee or AWACS, it works pretty well.
The really tortured ones like the USA PATRIOT act and AMBER alerts (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response- but actually named after an abducted child), clearly involve the acronym being chosen first. The ones that aren’t pre-existing words like HMMWV (pronounced Humvee) or AWACS or radar or scuba (which have become ordinary words, but didn’t start that way) involve coming up with the name first.
To be precise, that’s not a folk etymology; it’s an urban legend.
In language study, a folk etymology is one where an unusual word changes over time to match an existing word. An example is “turtle.” The word originally meant a bird, named for the sound of its call. After the Norman invasion, the French word, “tortue” was used for the lizard, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon “tortoise.” Folk etymology changed “tortue” to the more familiar “turtle,” so that the bird was renamed “turtle dove.”
Other words that underwent this include isinglass, haberdasher, cockroach, and crayfish.
As for etymological urban legends, I think Cecil once pointed out that the cuter the etymology, the less likely it is to be true.
And other than two possible exceptions (“OK” and “hep”), no word used prior to World War II was based on an acronym.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of the technical term; apparently the bullshit/urban legendary etymolgies are more properly called “false etymologies”.
Would not another good example of this process be that webbed or padded thingee we recline on out on the patio?
I imagine relatively few know that it’s actually a chaise longue, literally “long chair” in French. But we Yanks morphed it into chaise lounge.
Beat me to it. In linguistics, a folk etymology is what you describe above. It is not the type of false etymology listed in this thread. That said, the colloquial use of the term does generally apply to “folksy”/“folk tale” type etymologies.
Am I the only one who misread the title and expected a Chris Rock comedy routine?
No, no, no. It’s Fornication Under Consent of a King. Apparently it was common that before engaging in premarital relations throngs of people traveled to the nation’s capital to apply for fornication permits. The application process is lost to history.
When he dumped his ride, something shifted loose upstairs.
A good friend of mine swore up and down that was true but it always seemed suspicious to me and sure enough it’s been debunked many times.With the game well afoot through your detailed exposition, I need only note that the Parthians were the residents of Parthia, an ancient kingdom in what is now Iran, and Parthian horsemen really were famed for their “Parthian shot” fired while turning to retreat. “Parthian shot” has been used in a figurative sense to mean “a final insult or point of argument made as one is leaving” since the mid-19th century.
“Parting shot,” meaning the same thing and based on the sense of “parting” as a noun meaning “the action of leaving,” also dates to the mid-19th century. The underlying sense of “a last remark on your way out the door” is older, however, as “parting blow” is found as early as the 16th century (“Thus much I must say for a parting blow,” 1592).
What we have here, I suspect, is a very convenient coincidence. Given the spotty record of 19th century printed sources, it’s impossible to say with absolute certainty which phrase appeared first, although most authorities assume that “Parthian shot” was the original form. But even in the 19th century, people who knew who the Parthians were and thus truly understood the reference must have been fairly rare, and as the history of the Middle East became more obscure even among educated English speakers in the West, “parting” stepped up to fill the vacancy. This was, as you guessed, a classic case of folk etymology, where a more familiar word is substituted for a word in a phrase which is no longer (or never was) understood by its speakers. Our word “bridegroom,” for instance, was originally “brydguma,” meaning literally “bride-man.” But as the Old English “guma” (man) faded from the popular vocabulary, the more recent and thus familiar “groom” (meaning “male servant”) was substituted. The fact that “parting shot” fit so well with both the sound and the “while leaving” sense of “Parthian shot” made the process unusually seamless.
Thank you for alerting me to this.
From this day forward I hate everything Busey ever touched.
mmm
Ah, yes, good old folk etymologies. (Originally from FOLK, acronym for “fallacious origin in lieu of knowledge” + “etymology”.)
A similar exercise, but no one pretended it was real.
FORD:
Found on the road dead
Fix or repair daily
For only rolling downhill
F***ing old rebuilt dodge
Gradually, the fake acronyms expressed actual (alleged) traits of the brand, as opposed to schoolyard taunts.
HONDA
Hit Oldsmobile, no drive anymore
(from when Honda only made small cars)
TOYOTA
They overcharge you out the ass
(from a few years later, when Japanese brands were in great demand)
And the all-time champ:
FIAT
Fix it again, Tony
Or my personal favorite: *Feeble Italian Attempt at Transportation.
:D*
I just can’t pass up the opportunity to report an acronym/initialism that a work buddy and I dreamed up out of whole cloth. In the vending machines area of the company lunch room there was one of these refrigerated sandwich dispensers that had see-through doors to the sections where the sandwiches and other delights were kept. It was on a rotating center pole or the like and you would rotate it with a control button until that row of doors was in position to give you access to any door in the stack. You put in your money and selected the door with another button and voila’ you had something to eat.
We dubbed it the VARSCOND: Vertically Arranged Rotisserie Styled Coin Operated Nutrition Dispenser. To my knowledge we two were the only ones to have the semi-official name for the device and we prided ourselves in the cleverness of it all.
I hereby authorize you new owners of that secret name to use it as you see fit. Just remember me when you do! 
Minor nitpick: Aren’t the full titles and acronyms usually invented before the laws are passed? So strictly speaking they’re not backronyms.
Also “sparrowgrass” for asparagus, and “marchpane” for marzipan, which I think are pretty much obsolete now.
How was “hep” based on an acronym?
I remember they spelled that whole monster out on the news when it came out. There was a moment of silence in our living room while we digested it and then my brother said “Mother of God, that’s about as bad as SHIELD.”
You can add laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) to that list.
I Dale-Gribbled that for you.