- published: 19 Feb 2016
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Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux and Ameslan). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature) nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). In English and most other languages, such abbreviations have historically had limited use, but their coinage and use became much more common in the 20th century. As a type of word formation process, acronyms and initialisms are viewed as a subtype of blending.
The term acronym is the name for a word from the first letters of each word in a series of words (such as sonar, created from sound navigation and ranging). Attestations for "Akronym" in German are known from 1921, and for "acronym" in English from 1940. While the word abbreviation refers to any shortened form of a word or a phrase, some have used initialism or alphabetism to refer to an abbreviation formed simply from, and used simply as, a string of initials.[citation needed]