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The word for today is…
acronym (noun):
: a word (such as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology : The word acronym fuses together two combining forms: acr- (“beginning”) and -onym (“name” or “word”), both of which trace back to Greek. You may recognize -onym in other familiar (and older) English words, such as pseudonym and synonym. When acronym first entered English in the mid-20th century (likely influenced by or borrowed from the German word Akronym or Akronymon), some usage commentators decreed that it should refer to combinations of initial letters that were pronounced as if they were whole words (such as radar and scuba), and be differentiated from an initialism, which is spoken by pronouncing the component letters (as in FBI and CEO). These days, however, that distinction is largely lost, and acronym is a common label for both types of abbreviation.
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