I am pleased to finally post (split infinitives and all) on the SDMB after some years of obsessive, voyeuristic lurking.
Teeming millions, bastions of etymology, curators emeritus of the collective lexicon, lend me your redundonyms!
ATM Machine
PIN Number
They strike the ears oddly leave them chafed.
LCD Display
NIC Card
New technology creates more of them all the time.
We may not be able to end the nightmare of redundant phrases based on acronym ignorance, but if we work together, we can give the beast a common name. I call them redundonyms–and I have begun the long belated task of rounding them up.
Please help fight this battle. Share the redundonyms that you’ve encountered. It won’t be pretty, but if we work together we can beat acronym ignorance. Perhaps, someday, the redundonym will die with it.
Must the last letter of the acronym be the first letter of the appended word?
I’m trying to think of a phrase where the rule doesn’t apply. I thought of CBS network, but since CBS doesn’t actually stand for anything anymore*, I don’t think that counts.
*It used to be the Columbia Broadcasting System, and a broadcasting system is sort of the same thing as a network…right?..no?)
Thanks all for the replys so far! I knew this was the place to go!
That issue arose while talking to a friend. His suggestion was vetoed on another count, but I’m with you–we’ll break the rule when we find a valid exception.
The wiki article has a section for obsolete redundonyms to handle acronyms like DVD which now officially stand for nothing.
That kind of falls along the same lines as my friend’s suggestion, pdf document (portable document format).
I personally don’t thing either qualify because although they have repeated words, the fact that the repeated word occurs first as an adjective and then as a noun really prevents them from being technically redundant.
By the way, have to give Randy a pat on the back for DSW Shoe Warehouse (Designer Shoe Warehouse). It’s double and, as he said, and is often incorperated in their sign. Awesome.
In the Obsolete Redundonym Category: AT&T telephone (“AT&T” no longer officially stands for anything, but was once short for American Telegraph & Telephone)
I used to work for a mutual fund company that used an “IRA Account Application.” In this company, “IRA” was defined “Individual Retirement Account” – so it was an “Individual Retirement Account Account Application.” In my department’s communications, we called it “IRA Application,” but it’s kinda hard to be right when the redundancy is printed on the application. (Warding off the inevitable… IRA is sometimes defined as “Individual Retirement Agreement” – which would make it non-redundant. But, our specific company’s agreed-upon definition was “Individual Retirement Account.”)
Regarding “pdf” – the redundancy I often slip and use is “pdf format” (or portable document format format).