Webster's NewWorld Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations [antikvár]

Introduction The number of abbreviations and acronyms used in English continues to grow, with new ones being added almost daily from the media, the sciences, government, and many other sources. Webster's New World Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations is designed to supply readers with an up-to-date, easily used key to these shortened word forms. In this book, the term abbreviation means the shortened form of a word or phrase, e. g., Mr. for Mister, St. for Saint, Song of Sol. for Song of Solomon (Bible). Acronyms are words formed from the initial letter or letters of successive parts of a term. They derive from speech and should not contain or be followed by periods. Some are made up of all capital letters; others are all lowercase. Acronyms include names of organizations like NATO or OCAS, and technical terms Hke COBOL or LORAN. Some acronyms have joined the language as common words: laser, radar, scuba, sonar. There is a tendency, in ordinary use, toward the elimination of periods in abbreviations, especially in units of measure such as mph, lb, or hr. In this book, style has been primarily chosen to conform to usage in Words into Type, Third Edition (Prentice Hall, Englewood CHffs, New Jersey, 1974), a standard reference. In the following dictionary sections, the acronyms and abbreviations have been taken principally from the data- IV