An acronym is (from Merriam-Webster) “a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term”
Although the term is often mis-applied to any string of letters, it strictly only means those that form a spoken word. E.g, MADD and NASA are acronyms, FBI and MIT are not.
So “FBI” and “MIT” are instances of … what?
I had thought they are initialisms, but Merriam Webster has for initialism, “an acronym formed from initial letters,” so that shoots down that idea.
You need MW’s Third Unabridged (look in the Addenda at the beginning, p. 86a): "an acronym formed from initial letters; esp: one (as RPG) that is pronounced as separate letters"
With all due respect to the abridged Merriam-Webster, Francis E Dec, Esq, your initial thought was correct–they are initialisms, as Scarlett67 has pointed out:
Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage (2d ed. 2003).
I noticed last week that my French-English dictionary called acronyms that aren’t pronounced as words “letterwords.” Etymologically, though, “acronym” just means “head name.” Who decided that a name is strictly a set of letters that is pronounced as one word? Seems to me that a name is merely a word that identifies something.
Additionally, the Merriam-Webster definition produced above defines an “initialism” as a class of acronym, whereas Gardner’s Modern American Usage considers them separate types of “abbreviated names.” So which is it? Obviously, there’s no definitive word on it.
I personally think that it’s a silly, pretentious distinction to make. What does it matter how it’s pronounced? They’re formed the same way. Our minds decipher them the same way. This is an just another example of bored linguists trying to make something needlessly complicated.
I agree with typhoon. Your average person does not make this kind of distinction and it’s pointless to make it. And if you do make this distinction, what do you call that handful of these things that are sometimes pronounced as a string of letters and other times some other way? Examples: awol, ROTC.
One that always bothered me was “AOL”. Why not, “AMOL”? Why was America shortened to A, and Online shortened to OL? Sure it’s catchy, but what’s the deal?
