The WOMBAT is Backronimble - The World According to Backronyms

By Ian Dunn

Take a single word, or a group of words, and use each letter in sequence as an initial to start a string of new words. The resulting expression is a backronym, or a 'reverse acronym', and just about anything can serve as a backronym target. But in most cases, a really good backronym expression will refer back to the meaning of the target word(s) from which it was derived. This book revels in this kind of backronym self-reference, and considers the varying ways that it is possible. But the most practical and amusing approach to all this is to use a wide range of different target subjects. Here, there is a strong leaning towards Australian themes owing to the author's origins, but many other areas of general interest are also covered. Wild and witty backronyms are accordingly found within the topics of sex, life style, America, science, philosophy, technology, religion, and much more. Can computers compose really good backronyms? This too is given a working-over, and some conclusions reached. Each target word choice and associated backronym expressions are given running commentaries, extensive where appropriate. This is always done with an eye towards amusement and light entertainment, although there is some serious background material provided as well. Given the preoccupation of this book, the best way to conclude this description is surely with a backronym itself. So, here is a relevant target statement: "But read this book!" And here is the resulting expanded self-referential backronym expression, using each letter of the target in sequence: "Backronyms Ultimately Try Retroactively Expanding A Designated Target, Hatching Interesting Solutions, But Obviously Only Kiddingly!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Dunn
• Release date: Apr 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476415611

Ian Dunn

Ian Dunn lives in Australia, but he has worked for almost a decade in the US and maintains a professional link there. His background is in science and research, but he has long enjoyed wordplay and related pursuits.

Book preview

The WOMBAT is Backronimble

The World According to Backronyms

Ian Dunn

Published by Ian Dunn at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The WOMBAT is Backronimble – The World According to Backronyms

Copyright © 2012 Ian Dunn

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Foreword (And Backword)

Looping Around With Self-Reference

Let the Computer Do It?

Roll Out the Barrel

Chapter 2: The Back-Row of Popular Culture

False Acronyms are Real Backronyms

A Matter of Quality

Initially Modern

Chapter 3: Australia

A Tale of Two Cities

An Urban Oz-Tour

Commercially Speaking

Travel & Migration

A Salute to New England

Chapter 4: Politics & Politicians

Personalities

The Big Picture

Chapter 5: An Educational WOMBAT

Money

For Women

For Men

A Little Australiana

Work

A Philosophical and Trendy Marsupial

Chapter 6: Wankers

General Types

Taxing Types

Sydney Types

Legal Types

Chapter 7: America

A Bit of History

Cold Warriors

The Nation Itself

Wall Street

Presidents and Would-be’s

Politics Encore

USA Football

Chapter 8: Sex

How Come Every Time I Write ‘F’, You See ‘K’?

Service With a Smile

An Old-Fashioned WICH Hunt

Take Yourself In Hand….

When Help Is Needed….

Contraception, Or Lack Thereof

Subscriber Trunk Dialling

Chapter 9: Life Style

Drugs

Food

Modern Manners

Work (Or Lack Thereof)

A Musical Interlude

Chapter 10: Heavy Stuff

Philosophy

Science

Technology

Chapter 11: Backrodiversity

Eurosurgery

All Around the UK

Across the Seas to Ireland

The Error of Terror

Triplet Capers

Chapter 12: Religion

Labels to Believe In

The Personal Touch

A Tale of Two TOOTS

Wholly Bible Stories

Acknowledgements

Appendix

Additional Notes

Glossary

Index of Acronyms and Backronyms

Introduction

If the title of this book seems little cryptic, hopefully the subtitle is helpful. If not, a lot more background information is given in the first chapter, where the name of the game is a special type of wordplay (see that backronymic subtitle again), placing plenty of emphasis on the ‘play’. Amusement, diversion, and entertainment are also words to fit the theme. But it is possible that some of the outpourings herein carry additional messages, to be brushed off or absorbed as desired.

At this point, though, a couple of general points can be made to begin with. This production has a strong and unapologetic slant towards Australian themes, a leaning which might understandably fail to resonate with English-speaking readers from other parts of the world. Numbered among such people are those encountered overseas who compliment Australians on how well they have learned the English language, confuse Australia with a European country of similar name, and think kangaroos hop down the main streets of Australian cities. And even far better-informed foreigners are unlikely to have much knowledge or interest in Australian politics, or towards the details of local culture. But if you should happen to be reading this and come from (gasp!) a non-Australian background, even if English is not your mother tongue, don’t despair – just browse further. While not everything here may be your cup of tea, I do hope indeed that there are some tidbits of interest, if the overarching theme in general is to your liking. Spelling here conforms to that used in Australia, which you may find colourful if you’re unaccustomed to the extra ‘u’ in certain words, and other small differences. And if you are Australian (or possibly even hailing from the Land of the Long White Clod, to some extent) – well, then, you just don’t have any excuse at all, do you?

On that note, for navigation and orientation purposes, apart from the Table of Contents above, the meanings of terms used throughout this book are defined in a Glossary near the end. And the key ‘backronymic’ features of this book are listed as an Index, where each entry is linked to the appropriate place in the text.

Hopefully, the full significance of the title will become apparent after a little further browsing on your part. A nimble WOMBAT might just make your day….

Chapter 1: Foreword (and Backword)

Aorta be a law. Aorta, indeed, as Australians often mutter. I said, AORTA BE A LAW. Steady on, I’m not shouting. The words are presented in this way to show that the phrase means something in addition to its face value. It actually stands for Advise Only Reading This Afterwards, But Enjoy At Length As Wanted.

To put in other terms, this is a book to read in BITS (Bring Into Toilet Sometimes) and PIECES (Peruse In Easy Chunks, Enjoy Slowly), or DRIBS (Don’t Read It Briskly, Savour) and DRABS (Dilatory Readers Avoid Being Serious). So, this mighty tome is intended for browsing – maybe carousing, and possibly even arousing (if you’re an exceedingly kinky individual). And therefore there’s no need to read this informational preamble if you’re in a hurry – so by all means, dive right in. But of course, if you want a bit of background, that’s perfectly fine too….Whichever way you go, it can be seen as DUTY (Directly Up To You)

The centrepiece of everything here is the acronym. Familiar enough for you? No doubt, but there are some issues of definition to look at. Of course, an acronym is a string of letters used as an abbreviation for some longer object or term, and given human laziness, these things must have been coined for a long time. For example, in medieval days of old when knights were bold, and apparently forever holding tornaments and such like, maybe the word ‘joust’ came from JOUST, an acronym for ‘Just Our Usual Sporting Thing’. Or was it ‘Jump Off Under Spearing Threat’, for those mounted knights of the not-so-bold persuasion? On that note, acronyms might serve to hide some home truths. In that same gallant era, perhaps the prowess of knight-errants in battle came from PROWESS (Proud Regents Of War, Except Scared Shitless). Or perhaps not – surely those linguistic experts who would have you believe other fancy explanations for these word origins couldn’t be right, could they?

All right, you may still be skeptical, but I’m sure you’ll believe that real words in common use do come from acronyms. Think of laser (from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) and radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging). What do these have in common? They’re spoken using using standard pronunciation rules, rather than being spelt out like L-A-S-E-R. Once they’re well-assimilated into the language, the initial capital letters tend to be dropped, and the former novel acronym becomes simply a new useful word. And therein lies the distinction from non-pronounced abbreviations, which are sometimes called ‘initialisms’. For example, the company founded as International Business Machines is always referred to as IBM, spelt out letter by letter. Now, if you replace each letter of IBM with its predecessor in alphabetical order, you end up with HAL – the uppity artificial intelligence in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL denoted Heuristically-programmed ALgorithmic computer. Everyone connected with this movie (including the author Arthur C. Clarke) strenuously denied that this was anything other than a coincidence, but that’s neither here nor there – the point is, HAL can indeed be considered as an acronym (being pronounced as you would for Good King Hal), but IBM technically is only an initialism. And never forget this, lest the International Acronym Police seek you out.

But you will inevitably find that this rather tiresome ruling is routinely violated everywhere, with all manner of unsightly and unpronounceable agglomerations of letters still being referred to as acronyms. (I suspect the Acronym Police are more like the Keystone Cops, if this level of enforcement is anything to go by). The ‘pronounceable’ distinction can be fairly fluid, anyway. For example, what if people started referring to IBM as ‘ibbem’ (or something similar), where the letters were forced into a word-friendly state, ignoring the absence of a vowel or two. Would it then suddenly become an acronym after all? More sleepless nights and endless controversy for acronym / initialism hard-liners, who are more generally known as:

People Enjoying Denigrating All Normal-Type Sloppiness

Not to be pedantic, but this actually raises another issue: not all acronyms are created equal. By an amazing coincidence, the initials of the above expression spell out a word (PEDANTS) which is not irrelevant to the meaning of the original string of words themselves. So could we not take PEDANTS as an acronym for People Enjoying……Sloppiness? But not so fast. Might it just be possible that this wasn’t by chance, and that I had started with the word ‘pedants’ and worked backwards to make up an acronym that would fit? (Actually, if you still think this was a coincidence, I can sell you the Sydney Harbour bridge quite cheaply, please call soon). This kind of thing has become known as a backronym, or a special kind of acronym which is intentionally backwardly-formed. Now we’re cooking with gas.

Before going on, let’s just note a couple of things for clarity. When making a backronym, to start with you need to choose a particular word (or group of words). Then from such a choice, a new string of words is designed to fit each of the choice-word’s initial letters in sequence. So, often we’ll need to be very clear as to which words are we talking about. To banish confusion, a general name for the starting choice word(s) will be the backronym target. The string of words which fits the letters of target will be called the backronym expression. So as you can see, a backronym is really a two-pronged creature.

Throughout this book, I’ll use capitals to show a target word, and the words designed to make up the Backronym Expression will be in lower case except for their capitalized first letters. How about another arbitrary example? As the backronymic target word, what about CAPITALS, with its corresponding backronym expression:

Case Applies Primarily In This Arranged Letter Sequence

What does that mean? Not much by itself, but if it’s linked to the meaning of the backronym target word, then hopefully it takes on some significance, since the target itself is in upper case. But the linking of the meanings of the expression and the target is actually a point to think about further….

Looping Around With Self-Reference

A person of that nit-picky variety we’ve just referred to might distinguish several types of backronyms. A backronym target could be an ordinary word (how about ‘pedants’?), or it might be itself an acronym, which is (often humorously) re-defined. For example, if we target LASER, we could produce:

Luminal Augmentation Sends Enhanced Rays

Love And Sweetness Express Romance

Lechery Always Seems Extremely Rude

Let’s Admit, Sex Excites Raunchiness

Only one of these is intended to refer to the original meaning of LASER (no prizes for guessing which). Since a backronym expression which loops back to the target it defines is in effect referring to itself, we can call these self-referential. The above PEDANTS and CAPITALS backronym expressions also have this self-referential quality.

An easy way to make an acronym self-referential is to include it within the very expression from which it is derived. With our ‘pedantic’ example, this can be very simply done:

Pedants Enjoy Denigrating All Normal-Type Sloppiness

This kind of thing has been called a ‘recursive’ acronym. (In this case, the target PEDANTS is simply inserted back into the backronym expression itself, a recursive process). While they may not be technically cheating as such, to a real connoisseur of acronymic gymnastics (backrobatics?), they are less challenging and less interesting, and to be avoided. Obviously, the first letter of any target word (as in ‘P’ for PEDANTS) must start the first word of the expression which defines it, and so any target can always be fed back into a defining expression if desired. Acronyms with this kind of recursive recycling are clearly backronyms as well, and also obviously show self-reference. Yet by this recursive trick they get a kind of free ride which a ‘pure’ self-referential backronym does not have. Recall ‘People Enjoying Denigrating All Normal-Type Sloppiness’ is still self-referential for PEDANTS, but does not use recursion of the target word itself.

This kind of pondering leads us to what might be called a first law of acronymics:

All recursive acronyms are self-referential, but not all self-referential acronyms are recursive. Or in other words, you don’t have to be recursive to be self-referential. Note that this law specifies ‘acronyms’, but if ‘backronyms’ are substituted, it is really the same thing. Any acronym whose defining expression is recursive (containing the acronym itself) or self-referential in any other manner, is deliberately ‘pointing backwards’. And it simply follows from this that any recursive or self-referential acronyms by definition are within the acronym subset called backronyms.

But on the other hand, it’s not hard to show that a backronym doesn’t have to be self-referential. One could just as easily come up with this for PEDANTS:

Performance-Enhancing Drugs Are Now Taken Seriously

This is a perfectly reasonable statement, but it would not be pedantic at all to admit that its meaning has little to do with pedantry. Likewise, if we recall the LASER examples above, it appears only one of them could qualify as self-referential by any yardstick.

In fact, a vast number of different backronyms can be designed for almost any word. The trick is to generate a meaning that is interesting. A mishmash of random words doesn’t quite cut it.

Having sorted some of these issues out, let’s get really self-referential, if not physical. What about targeting ACRONYM itself for backronyms?

Consider these two:

Abbreviated Creations Rely On Names You Make

A Crafty Rule Of Notation, Yet Meaningful

And then these three:

Australian Charities Really Only Need Your Money

A Crude Revue Offering Nude Young Men

Active Crime Requires Only Nasty Young Males

Now, the first two samples are meant to directly refer to what an acronym is, and therefore have a self-referential aspect. The next three are quite meaningful statements, but don’t have this reference to acronyms themselves. And yet, think….any backronym of ACRONYM must be self-referential, since the backronym expression creates an acronym which itself is ACRONYM! So the first two are in fact doubly self-referential.

Now, you might well be wondering, what about backronyms of BACKRONYM itself? Well, once again, some designated directly self-referential offerings:

Backcast Abbreviations Create Knowledgeable Read-Out Needing Your Mastery

Build Alternative Constructions, Keep Revising Obscure Names You Made

…and some that do not directly refer back to the BACKRONYM target:

Beware All Crass Knockers: Really Only Negative Yelping Morons

Buy A Car Knowledgeably, Rely On Nuancing Your Motoring

In the same manner as for ACRONYM itself, any backronym of BACKRONYM is self-referential, but the first two directly refer back to the target’s meaning as well. Admittedly, the self-reference of the latter may be relatively subtle and not in-your-face obvious, at least without further information. This might be intentional on the part of the designer, but it’s just as likely to be forced on one by the target word itself. Some letter combinations are just not so fertile. In BACKRONYM, for example, the ‘K’ is a bit of a limiting factor – but we strive with the materials on hand, and they say a poor workman blames his tools.

But where does it stop? A highly obscure self-reference might escape most people’s attention. If nobody else on the planet could detect the self-reference except the designer (or even a small group of avant-garde afficionados), would it really be self-referential? (If a tree falls in a forest with no-one around, is there a sound….?). Let’s not go there. I think