You can probably figure out what initialisms are, but here’s what it takes to transform them into orphaned initialisms.
We’ve talked about initialisms before, but I’ll confess that I hadn’t heard of orphaned initialisms until very recently. I visit various grammar-related websites and browse around. (Hey, there are worse hobbies to have, right?)
A site called Word Smarts had an article explaining exactly what makes an initialism an orphan.
First things first
Initialisms are words made up of initials. That’s simple enough, right? But here’s where it might become a bit confusing. Some abbreviations are acronyms. But others are initialisms. So what’s the difference between acronyms and initialisms?
NASA is an acronym. We pronounce it as if it were any other normal word. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. FBI is an initialism. It’s not a pronounceable word. It stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation.
That’s the difference between an acronym and an initialism: If you can pronounce it like a regular word, it’s an acronym. If you can’t, it’s an initialism.
But what both usually have in common is that their letters all stand for something. Usually.
When an initialism no longer stands for anything, it’s ‘orphaned’
Imagine you’re playing a trivia game and a question about the CBS network comes up. Some of you probably already have the answer in your head: “Columbia Broadcasting System.” Yes, that’s what CBS’s full name used to be.
But a funny thing happened back in 1974. The company changed its name from Columbia Broadcasting System, often abbreviated to the familiar initials, to CBS, Inc. CBS technically no longer stands for anything, even though it originally stood for that longer name.
So CBS is an example of an orphaned initialism.
Word Smarts says orphaned initialisms can also be called “abandoned initialisms,” which might be a better name.
It gives another pop culture example: KFC. Yes, it used to stand for “Kentucky Fried Chicken.” But the company switched to initials and mostly uses only those initials to promote itself. The story goes that as the nation briefly got more health-conscious, the restaurant chain hoped to distance itself from “fried.”
Do you remember your best score on the SAT? If you’re of a certain age, that particular exam helped you get into college, depending on how well you did. I took it only once and knew that my score, which wasn’t as high as I would have liked, was high enough to get into what would become my alma mater. I was sick that day, feverish and not sure I’d make it through. But I did. I figured that if, as sick as I felt that day, I was able to surpass the minimum score I needed — by about 200 points or so as I recall, but I’d have to confirm that — then taking it again was unnecessary.
We talk about the SAT, but what does it stand for? That’s the point: It doesn’t matter anymore. The former Scholastic Aptitude Test is now just the SAT. Most people know what we’re talking about even when we don’t know what the individual letters stand for.
Imagine orphaned initialisms as nicknames. Sometimes, a person becomes better known by their nickname than their full name. Once in a while, people forget that the nickname isn’t their actual name.
There you have it!
