Medical terminology and slang contain many abbreviations, of which acronyms and backronyms are varieties. There are many acronymic forms according to pronunciation and formation. Regarding pronunciation, there are acronyms that form real words; acronyms that resemble incorrectly spelt real words; and acronyms that can be pronounced as if they were real words but aren’t. Regarding formation, some acronyms are formed solely from the first letters of the words they represent; acronyms that use more than one letter from the start of some of the words they represent; and acronyms that can include letters from anywhere in the words they represent. In some cases some of the words whose initials should be part of the acronym are ignored. Backronyms are of two types: those that are formed with a specific set of words in mind, choosing the words to fit the acronym; and those that incorrectly explain the origin of a word by attributing an explanatory etymology derived from its initial letters.
An acronym is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) as “A word formed from the initial letters of other words or (occasionally) from the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being pronounced as a single word.”1 The word is a surprisingly relatively recent coinage in English, first attested in 1940, although the phenomenon is much older.
Examples of medical acronyms include ACE (Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme), AID (Artificial Insemination [by] Donor), AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), CODA (Children Of Deaf Adults), GIFT (Gamete Intra-Fallopian Transfer), and TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation). The term “care package” was originally coined to describe a humanitarian aid package devised by the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE); subsequently it became applied to any package that provided some form of care.
Some initialisms are not true acronyms, but since …