Also published by Bloomsbury Reference: Bloomsbury English Dictionary 0 7475 6243 1 Who’s Whose A no-nonsense guide to easily confused words 0 7475 7231 3 Bloomsbury Dictionary of Euphemisms 0 7475 5045 X Good Word Guide 0 7475 6524 4 (hb) 0 7475 7232 1 (pb) Bloomsbury Grammar Guide 0 7475 5035 2 Dictionary of Word Origins 0 7475 5448 X Eating out en français 0 7475 6975 4 Eating out in five languages 0 7475 6977 0 Oddbins Dictionary of Wine 0 7475 6641 0 A Cook’s Dictionary 0 7475 7226 7 Specialist dictionaries: Dictionary of Accounting 0 7475 6991 6 Dictionary of Banking and Finance 0 7475 6685 2 Dictionary of Business 0 7475 6980 0 Dictionary of Computing 0 7475 6622 4 Dictionary of Economics 0 7475 6632 1 Dictionary of Environment and Ecology 0 7475 7201 1 Dictionary of Hotels, Tourism and Catering Management 1 9016 5999 2 Dictionary of Human Resources and Personnel Management 0 7475 6623 2 Dictionary of Law 0 7475 6636 4 Dictionary of Marketing 0 7475 6621 6 Dictionary of Medical Terms 0 7475 6987 8 Dictionary of Military Terms 0 7475 7477 4 Dictionary of Nursing 0 7475 6634 8 Dictionary of Politics and Government 0 7475 7220 8 Dictionary of Science and Technology 0 7475 6620 8 Easier English™ titles: Easier English Basic Dictionary 0 7475 6644 5 Easier English Basic Synonyms 0 7475 6979 7 Easier English Intermediate Dictionary 0 7475 6989 4 Easier English Student Dictionary 0 7475 6624 0 An A to Z of Abbreviations Rosalind Fergusson First published 2004 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 38 Soho Square, London W1D 3HB Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7475 7230 5 eISBN-13: 978-1-4081-0258-9 Text Production and Proofreading Katy McAdam, Joel Adams, Heather Bateman All papers used by Bloomsbury Publishing are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Text processed and computer typeset by Bloomsbury Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives Plc Introduction We live in an age of haste. Everything has to be done the day before yesterday and at breakneck speed. This need for speed, fuelled by technology, has led to a corresponding demand for conciseness in language. The formal, rather verbose and formulaic business letter is being increasingly replaced by the less formal, more concise – and frequently misspelt – e-mail. This desire for conciseness has provided the perfect breeding ground for that traditional space-saving device, the abbreviation. The invention of the mobile phone, or rather the popular use of its keypad to send messages, known as text messaging, has done even more to promote it. Several expressions found in basic text messaging are formed in the same way that traditional abbreviations are – by using the initial letters of the relevant words. Thus, we findYNK(‘you never know’); the not very politeMYOB(‘mind your own business’); andHAND(the abbreviation of the most annoying phrase ever borrowed from American English, ‘have a nice day’). Text messaging, however, takes a few liberties with the traditional system of abbreviation. Many of the shortened forms are abbreviations, but not as we know them. Letter sounds, for example, are much used, as inTHNQ(‘thank you’),CUL (‘see you later’) andRU?(‘are you?’). Even more confusing to the uninitiated is the use of numbers in text messaging, as in such expressions asGR8(‘great’) andF2T (‘free to talk’). The recent growth in abbreviations is not restricted to these trendy texting forms however. Indeed, there has been a proliferation of them wherever you look and no area of life is immune from them. They have infiltrated not only the newer disciplines such as ecology and computing, but also the older, more staid disciplines of the law and medicine. I will not quote any of them here because the text of the book is crammed with them. Take your pick! It is, of course, this sheer volume of abbreviations in modern times that is really novel. Abbreviations, in fewer numbers, have been with us for a considerable time. Indeed, medieval scribes used them when penning their parchments as a means of saving space and reducing effort. These early abbreviations were in Latin and some of these have survived until the present day. Thus, most of us would be familiar with abbreviations such asa.m.,p.m., e.g.andi.e., and we would also be likely to know that they mean, respectively, ‘before noon’, ‘after noon’, ‘for example’ and ‘that is’. Of course, we might not know what Latin words the abbreviations actually stand for, but this does not come between us and our comprehension of the abbreviated expressions. As Latin waned and people began to write in the vernacular language, the practice of abbreviating expressions continued at a gradual pace, increasing rapidly in the nineteenth century. But, before that, asFowler’s Modern Englishreminds us, the practice was condemned by some well-known writers and critics. We find Joseph Addison writing in theSpectatorin 1711 that ‘It is perhaps this Humour of speaking no more than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some of our Words … as in mob., rep., pos., incog., and the like.’ Just slightly later, in 1712, in hisProposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, Swift proposed an annual expurgatory publication which would ‘condemn those barbarous mutilations of vowels and syllables’ including the curtailment of words referred to by Addison, known to us as abbreviations. However, even criticism from great minds did not stem the habit of abbreviating words, and the nineteenth century brought us shortened forms (not strictly abbreviations) such asspecs(1826),cab(1827),flu(1839),ad(1841),zoo(1847), pub(1859),photo(1860),vet(1862),pro(1866),gym(1871),bike(1882), and phone(1884). It also saw the rise of a vogue for informal and humorous abbreviations such asOK(all correct) andPDQ(pretty damned quick). The first of these has survived and even transcended its abbreviation status to become a word with various parts of speech. The latter has also survived on the lips and pens of the peremptory, but it is now dated. The twentieth century got off to a good start, as far as shortenings were concerned, withtaxi(1907),fridge(1935) andtelly(1942). But quite far into that century shortened forms still did not enjoy anything like the status they enjoy today. Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, many dictionaries still tended to relegate abbreviations to the back pages together with such add-ons as the table of chemical elements: they did not belong in the main text among the ‘real’ words. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, abbreviations began to proliferate. They were aided in this spawning by the fact that more and more public and private bodies came into being and were given names which defied memorizing. Soon abbreviations stopped just being names of organizations or part of the jargon of some professions and trades which most of us could happily ignore. They became part of our everyday lives. The early 1980s brought usAidsand, slightly later in the decade,HIV andBSE,all of which relate to life-and-death issues. In the second part of the 1980s began the trend towards forming humorous, or facetious, acronyms. Many of these came and went, as they deserved to do, butYuppie(a ‘young upwardly mobile professional’) andNimby(‘not in my backyard’, the cry of the not-so-concerned environmentalists) have hung on in there. Abbreviations have much in common with jargon in that they have become part of the language that is exclusive to a particular profession or group. Language used in this way, as a convenient shorthand, can easily become a kind of barrier – a way of reinforcing people’s sense of belonging to an in-group. The scale of abbreviations now is such that there is absolutely no possibility of remembering the huge number that are circulating in the wider world, and dictionaries cannot possibly spare the space to accommodate even a fraction of these. Abbreviations are one of the most daunting features of the English language. They can be both obscure and contrived and, because they have become so omnipresent in our lives, we need a guide to help us penetrate them. So it is that they have been accorded a whole volume to themselves, a volume which takes the pain out of abbreviations and makes them approachable, interesting and, at times, entertaining. Abbreviations have certainly come a long way since they were simply a space-filling list in the back pages of dictionaries. Betty Kirkpatrick Editor’s note This book covers the four main types of abbreviation – shortenings, contractions, initialisms, and acronyms – but does not label them explicitly. These four types are as follows: Shorteningsof words usually consist of the first few letters of the full form and are usually spelt with a final full stop when they are still regarded as abbreviations, for examplecont.= continued,etc.= et cetera. They may also consist of the stressed syllable of the shortened word, e.g.busorgym. In cases where they form words in their own right, the full stop is omitted, for examplehippo= hippopotamus. Such shortenings are often but not always informal. Some become the standard forms, and the full forms are then regarded as formal or technical, for examplebus= omnibus, pub= public house,zoo= zoological garden. Contractionsare abbreviated forms in which letters from the middle of the full form have been omitted, for exampleDr= doctor,St= saint or street. Practice varies with regard to adding a full stop, but in modern British usage it is increasingly usual to omit it. Another kind of contraction is the type with an apostrophe marking the omission of letters:can’t= cannot,didn’t= did not,you’ve= you have. Initialismsare made up of the initial letters of words and are pronounced as separate letters:CIA(orC.I.A.),pm(orp.m.),US(orU.S.). Practice again varies with regard to full stops, with current usage increasingly in favour of omitting them, especially when the initialism consists entirely of capital letters. Acronymsare initialisms that have become words in their own right, or similar words formed from parts of several words. They are pronounced as words rather than as a series of letters, for exampleAids,NATO,FIFA, and do not have full stops. Some become so established they are no longer recognized as acronyms, for exampleradar, laserandscuba. In many cases the acronym becomes the standard term and the full form is only used in explanatory contexts. Pronunciation Guide The following symbols have been used to show the pronunciation of abbreviations in the dictionary. Stress is indicated by a main stress mark ((cid:1)) and a secondary stress mark((cid:2)). Note that these are only guides, as the stress of the word changes according to its position in the sentence. Vowels Consonants (cid:3) back b buck ɑ(cid:6) harm d dead ɒ stop ð other a type d(cid:15) jump aυ how f fare aə hire (cid:19) gold aυə hour h head ɔ(cid:6) course j yellow ɔ annoy k cab e head l leave eə fair m mix e make n nil eυ go ŋ sing (cid:28)(cid:6) word p print i(cid:6) keep r rest i happy s save ə about ʃ shop  fit t take ə near tʃ change u annual θ theft u(cid:6) pool v value υ book w work υə tour x loch ’ shut (cid:15) measure z zone Dialect Labels This book uses the following labels to indicate the geographical area where an abbreviation is used: ANZ = Australia and New Zealand NZ = New Zealand Aus = Australia S Africa = South Africa Can = Canada S Asia = South Asia N Am = North America US = United States of America AlphaSoup.fm Page 1 Monday, July 19, 2004 4:56 PM A aa 1. PHYSICS acceleration 2. MEASUREMENTS are 3. TRANSPORT arrives AA 1. COMPUTING 10 (used in hexadecimal notation) 2. ROADS a main road other than a motorway (NOTE: The abbreviation A is used before the road number, as in A28.) 3. CHEMISTRY activity 4. BIOCHEMISTRY adenine 5. MEASUREMENTS, PHYSICS ampere 6. MEASUREMENTS, PHYSICS angstrom 7. PHYSICS mass number ÅÅ MEASUREMENTS, PHYSICS angstrom AA2 2 EDUCATION in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the second year of a full A-level course, or the examination taken at the end of that year AAA A 1. HEALTH Alcoholics Anonymous 2. SOCIAL WELFARE a state benefit paid to disabled people to cover the cost of constant care or supervision. Full form attendance allowance 3. AUTOMOTIVE Automobile Association AAAA AA 1. /(cid:1)trp(ə)l (cid:9)e/ ATHLETICS Amateur Athletic Association 2. ACCOUNTING American Accounting Association 3. AUTOMOTIVE American Automobile Association 4. ARMS antiaircraft artillery 5. AUTOMOTIVE Australian Automobile Association AAAD AD MONEY Arab accounting dinar aa.a.e..a.e. HUMAN RESOURCES according to age and experience (used in job advertisements) AAAIAAIA ACCOUNTING Associate of the Association of International Accountants AAAM AM ARMS air-to-air missile AAAMOFAMOF ONLINE as a matter of fact (used in e-mails) AA & E & E HEALTH SERVICES the official name of the hospital department traditionally known as casualty. The US equivalent is ER (emergency room). Full form accident and emergency AA & M & M CHRISTIANITY (Hymns) Ancient and Modern AA & R & R RECORDING artists and repertoire AAARFARF ACCOUNTING Australian Accounting Research Foundation AAAS AS ACCOUNTING Australian Accounting Standard AAASBASB ACCOUNTING Australian Accounting Standards Board AA’asia’asia Australasia AAAT AT ACCOUNTING Association of Accounting Technicians AAAVEAVE LANGUAGE African American Vernacular English AAB B 1. NAVY able-bodied seaman 2. Alberta 3. US EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts 4. BUSINESS a type of company in Swedish-speaking countries. The abbreviation is equivalent to plc or Ltd. Full form Aktiebolaget AABA BA 1. BOXING Amateur Boxing Association 2. BANKING American Bankers Association 3. LAW American Bar Association AABB BB MANAGEMENT activity-based budgeting aabbr.bbr. abbreviation AABC BC 1. MANAGEMENT activity-based costing 2. BROADCASTING American Broadcasting Company 3. BROADCASTING Australian Broadcasting Corporation 4. the alphabet, especially in referring to basic reading and writing AABCsBCs BUSINESS Audit Bureau of Circulations AABENDBEND /(cid:9)(cid:11)bend/ 1. COMPUTING a sudden failure of a computer program or system. Full form abnormal end 2. ONLINE absent by enforced Net deprivation (NOTE: The