As opposed to MC? (master of ceremonies if you’re wondering)
Why not? :dubious:
Seriously. Someone once wrote it that way, and the convention stuck. It looks cool!
I’m sure there are other examples of letters being turned into words and vice versa. Like “barbecue” and “bar-B-Q.”
For the same reason that “deejay” is a word.
Is there a word for this phenomenon?
Anybody got any other examples?
See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo.
“Okay” for OK. Also, less commonly, “teevee” for TV.
tee-shirt occasionally for T-shirt.
There’s the en and the em, which are typographic units.
Probably lots of examples in brand names, such as Vee Jay Records.
“Seabees” for CBs - US Navy’s Construction Battalions.
But those are things distinct from N and M, the letters. You have to have different terms.
Brand names are similarly their own thing.
The rest of the examples here look dumb to my eye, and I scorn them. I certainly don’t see “emcee” overtaking “MC” in actual usage.
Or for that matter simply “tee,” which is already a word but now has the meaning of “a t-shirt.”
“Emcee” is just an acronym. We have zillions of those, don’t we? Radar, scuba, laser, Pakistan and taser are all acronyms.
Maybe when they got verbed? A DJ deejays a club. An MC emcees a pageant.
“Emcee” is a transcription of an initialism, not a pronounced-word acronym like your examples (leaving aside some quibbles about “Pakistan”). If “MC” were an acronym like the rest, wouldn’t it would be spelled the same–not “emcee”–but pronounced “mick”?
The company name Esselte stands for Sveriges Litografiska Tryckerier, or SLT for short.
There’s also Arby’s Roast Beef (Raffel Brothers) and the BeeGees (Brothers Gibb)
Emcee used to be the standard until the hip-hop era. Before MC Hammer, you’d never see MC in actual use.
Cecil calls jeep for GP (general purpose) an elision. Maybe that’s the best word for the phenomenon, even though jeep is a false example of it (as Cecil also points out). That’s the essdee!
Before Melle Mel, you mean. All my referents are subsequent. (Suggestion: Don’t ever use MC Hammer to exemplify “the hip-hop era” again.)
Melle Mel wasn’t the one to introduce the term to the mainstream.
Which in turn reminds me of the Gee Bee.