For the purposes of this list, an acronym is an abbreviation pronounced as a series of constituent letters; an initialism is an abbreviation whose pronunciation is wholly or partly the names of constituent letters; and a pseudo-blend is an abbreviation whose extra or omitted letters means that it cannot be considered a true acronym, initialism, or portmanteau (a word formed by combining two or more words).
(a) = acronym in the example: SARS - (a) Severe acute respiratory syndrome
(i) = initialism in the example: CD - (i) Compact disc
(p) = pseudo-blend in the example: UNIFEM - (p) United Nations Development Fund for Women
(s) = symbol (none of the above, stands for and is read as something else; for example: MHz - Megahertz)
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Please add your own, in a quasi-dictionary order with lowercase treated the same as uppercase and ignoring non-alphanumeric characters (hyphens and such). This means that only alphanumeric characters have any significance in determining order, and that lowercase letters occupy the same ordering position as uppercase (in tie-breaker cases, list lower case first). For example: Algol appears before ALS. (This differs from a strict ASCII ordering.)
AC - (i) Adriamycin-Cyclophosphamide (chemotherapy) - Air Conditioning - Albert Champion - Alternating Current - Anonymous Coward - ante Christum (Latin, "before Christ"; see BC) - ante cibum (Latin, "before meals") - (s) Antigua and Barbuda (NATO country code) - (i) Associazione Calcio (Italian, "football (soccer) club")
A/C - (i) Aircraft
ACA - (i) Airspace Control Authority - Airspace Co-ordination Area
ACARS - (a) Aircraft Communication Reporting System
ACN - (i) Airborne Communications Node - Australian Company Number (number issued by the Australian government as registration of a limited liability company)
AL - (s) Alabama (postal symbol) - Albania (NATO country code; ISO 3166 digram) - (i) Anno Lucis, the "Year of Light" in Masonic tradition (Most often seen on plaques bearing the founding dates of buildings, in years AD and years AL)
AUC - (i) Ab Urbe Condita / Anno Urbis Conditae (Latin "from the founding of the city" / "in the year since the founding of the city") (of Rome) - Area Under the Curve (concentration time curve; medicine)
BP - (i) British Petroleum (today, BP doesn't officially stand for anything) - (s) Solomon Islands (NATO country code; from British Protectorate of the Solomon Islands)
Many acronyms and abbreviations are also motivational and inspirational for training, because they contain a special theme, and because the acronym or abbreviation itself is a mnemonic device (a memory aid).
Military acronym, which implied a few days in the punishment block for the absconder when apprehended, the expression is now well established in life generally and applied to any missing, lost or wandered-off person or item causing breach of rules or mere inconvenience.
This form of the acronym is of course eminently transferable to all orgnisational situations where managers fail to notice their mistakes, and also fail to notice the generosity of their staff, who bail them out and never mention a thing....
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