As far as the definition of acronym, see my second post in this thread
I listed the half dozen most commonly used acronym derived words in that thread (radar, laser, sonar, scuba, snafu, and canola). Others can be found in the rec.puzzles FAQ (search that page for “acronym”).
What is the oldest still-used acronym? Most of them are 20th century creations.
jayjay:
Ironic that they ignore their own criteria, isn’t it? Check out their most commonly requested acronym page:
http://www.acronymfinder.com/mostcommon.asp
Most (if not all) of the acronyms I provided are captured here and upheld by their database to be acronyms. Plus a few hundred other non pronouncable acronyms. Now I’m not sure why they would include unpronouncable non-acronyms (given their definition), however I’m inclined to forgive them this transgression since, in fact, their definition is clearly wrong.
If you look up the word acronym in a “GOOD” dictionary you should see something like the phrases “word or word form” or “the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word”. In other words, an acronym only needs to “look” like a word. Most on-line dictionaries use only abbreviated versions of the first definition of a word, so they are not your best reference when such questions of meaning arise. Even still, none of the ones I searched specified pronouncability. I assure you that pronouncability is NOT a criteria for acronyms.
Am I being “linguistically permissive” or are you being “linguistically restrictive”? I think the dictionaries (as well as common practice) support my position.
In response to Badtz:
Perhaps RSVP, though originally it was not an acronym - merely an abbreviation (R.S.V.P.). I’m not sure whether it is technically an acronym now, though I do note that acronymfinder.com lists it in their database… and I have heard it pronounced “rizz vip”.
The US video standard, NTSC, isn’t an acronym but the other two, PAL and SECAM, are. PAL being phase alteration by line and SECAM being, um, something in French…
And depending on who you ask NTSC refers either to the standard itself, national television systems code or the congressional group responsible for it, national television systems committee. And, yeah yeah, never twice the same color (I hate that stupid joke.)
fubar
snafu
NFL
NBA
UPS
COD
CIA
FBI
rotflmao
lol
brb
afk
bbl
pita (pain in the ass, I made it up, but it WILL be popular)
broccoli!
Billdo:
What planet are you from?! I have never, ever heard LED pronounced ‘lead’ and I would slap anyone who would try to!
While I’m at it:
MS-DOS is pronounced ‘em es das’ as in Das Boot, not doss (rhymes with boss).
RAM is pronounced like, well, ram as in Dodge Ram or ‘ram it down your throat’. Not ram (rhymes with bomb). That’s how you pronounce ROM (not like Rome).
I better stop, I sound like Dr. Seuss…
I hate to sound insistant, but:
Things like CD, LED, USA, etc… don’t fit the bill, as everyone knows that they are acronyms (even if they’re not 100% sure what it stands for).
But imagine the satisfaction of studying English as a second language, and going up to a native speaker and asking “What does SCUBA stand for?” and when the native speaker says “Duh… I dunno…” being able to tell him/her!
My students eat this stuff up…
SECAM Sequential Color & Memory
SECAM Séquentiel Couleur Avec Mémoire (French Color TV Standard)
SECAM Something Essentially Contrary to American Method (play on SECAM TV format) 
The first is a translation of the French, and they are all from the acronym site listed above.
“Crud” is one I’ve used for years. It can be as general as “crap”, but I think it comes from ham radio and stands for Continuous Random Unwanted Disturbance.
And how about “awol” - absent without leave.
And excuse the racist term, but “wop” - without passport.
Because being written in all caps is strongly indicative of acronymic origins, those origins are generally only forgotten by the majority of people when the acronym is written in lowercase. But knowing that it’s an acronym is not the same as knowing what the acronym stands for. Example: a couple years ago I was in a class on DCOM programming and the teacher asked if anyone knew what ASCII stood for. Everyone there (and they were all experienced programmers) knew it was an acronym, but only one of us (me) was able to expand it. So there may be other all cap acronyms that most people don’t know the expansion for, but to find them, I expect you’re going to have to go around and take polls like that teacher did.
In my previous post above, I gave a link to the rec.puzzles FAQ that doesn’t seem to work (at least I can’t seem to get it to work). If you can’t get there, try ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/archive/language/ and then select part 1 then search for “acronym”.
I just reviewed that list and noticed one error. In the list of Near Misses, he includes “deet”, rejected because it is supposedly pronounced as a series of letters. That’s incorrect. It’s pronounced /dit/ and should be in the regular list.
But deet, like most of the other words in that list, is not a common household word (despite the fact that it’s in a common household product; check the ingredients of any bug repellant you have). Of the “pure” acronyms, we’ve already mentioned all the common ones. The blends should add a few more such as napalm and modem.
The common English word crud predates the invention of radio by several centuries. So that acronym is at best a bacronym.
Awol is rather old as acronyms go, dating from either 1919 (according to Merriam Webster) or the Civil War. I doubt the earlier date, since the place I read it accompanied it with an unlikely story of its origin. However, I don’t think it meets Astroboy’s criteria, since most people know what it stands for.
That’s a bogus etymology. Look it up in the dictionary.
As long as we’re counting Nabisco, let’s add Coleco - Connecticut Leather Company, I believe.
Hail Ants, how do you pronounce das as in Das Boot? I pronounce DOS to rhyme with boss, and I say das with just a slightly shorter “ah” sound.
Mr2001 - At least with my relatively neutral mid-western accent, the a in das is pronounced “ah”, while the o in boss is pronounced “aw”. However, regional accents could easily make the 2 vowels pronounced identically.
Scott
In southeast Michigan and Northeast Ohio (and among every other person I’ve ever met), DOS (whether it’s MS-DOS, or the old pre-VSE IBM mainframe system) rhymes with boss, floss, and loss.
To rhyme DOS with the German article das, I would expect to have to travel to Bahston, MA.
It’s not really a proper acronym, but modem is short for MOdulator/DEModulator.
I guess everybody’s got DSL now and it’s a moot point.
Hail Ants:
Well, you’ve got a lot of slapping to do 'round here. I work with a bunch of Electrical Engineers and Electronic Technicians, in and out of labs and more than 50% of 'em say “led” rather than “ell-ee-dee”.
toonerama:
And of course ham is an acronym for Handheld Amateur Radio…
dtilque:
Very good point. I suspect that since I see people write “ram” and “rom” quite a bit, many folks that don’t know their origin may not realize that these are acronyms. And to your point about knowing what common acronyms stand for, ask young folks these days what CD stands for and more than half of them will tell you it’s “Computer Disk”… I asked my kids (ages 10 and 14) what VCR stood for and they didn’t have a clue, even though they use the term a dozen times a day or more…
delini8r:
Actually, MODEM is considered an acronym. Most definitions for acronym say either the first character or first few characters of each word in a name or phrase.
Just an interesting note: here in Malaysia I recently bought what was advertised as a VCR, but it didn’t record.
OK, it’s an old joke but…
TWAIN (for scanners and the like)= Technology Without An Interesting Name
Even in Bahstin, we pronounce “DOS” to rhyme with ‘boss’, etc.
To respond to the terminology question, I’d agree that the difference between ‘acronym’ and ‘initialism’ should exist. However, it has by now been phased out and will be nigh impossible to bring back again. (Sigh.)
[hijack]
What do you call those things that look like acronyms but are really meant to be pronounced as a series of letters and numbers yet configured to sound like words or phrases?
Examples:
NXS - In Excess
OU812 - Oh, you ate one too
X10U8 - Extenuate
MED8 - Immediate
N10CT - Intensity
10SC - Tennessee
MAC8 - Emaciate
XLR8 - Accelerate
INVU - I envy you
Not looking for a list, just a name… maybe I’ll start a new thread in an appropriate forum to identify the most clever assemblage… assuming I know what to call them.
[/hijack]