initialism

From initial +‎ -ism.

• IPA^(key): /ɪˈnɪʃəlɪzəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

initialism (plural initialisms)

1. (linguistics) A term formed from the initial letters of several words or parts of words, which is itself pronounced letter by letter.

   Synonym: alphabetism

   Hypernyms: acronym (broad sense) < abbreviation (broad sense) < word (broad sense)

   Hyponym: orphan initialism

   Coordinate term: acronym (strict sense)

   The term BBC is an initialism for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

2. (linguistics) The process of forming words or terms using initial letters of other words.
   • 2015, James Lambert, “Lexicography as a teaching tool: A Hong Kong case study”, in Lan Li, Jamie McKeown, Liming Liu, editors, Dictionaries and corpora: Innovations in reference science. Proceedings of ASIALEX 2015 Hong Kong, Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, page 146:

     The next most frequent source language was English, with neologistic compounds accounting for 15 etymologies, with 9 other English-based terms from a variety of word formation processes such as initialism and semantic extension.

See acronym § Usage notes.

• Category:English shortenings

• initialism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “initialism”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “initialism”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “initialism, acronym, abbreviation, shortening, abecedism”, in Google Books Ngram Viewer.