Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site uw-june
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!uw-june!pablo
From: pablo@uw-june (David Cohn)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Searching for a word
Message-ID: <361@uw-june>
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 17:43:38 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-june.361
Posted: Fri Feb  7 17:43:38 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Feb-86 04:10:00 EST
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 20
Keywords: acronym

A year ago or so a friend and I were trying to decide on a name for
a programming language we had created as part of a thesis. Convention
being what it was, we were in search of some proper acronym, but failing
to find one that tickled us appropriately, we settled on the name 'Havoc'.

Here lies my question: I need, in order to efficiently answer the questions
of others, the word that is the antonym of 'acronym'. Maybe 'the expansion
of', but that doesn't sound right. I've been using the term 'anacronym'
(pronounced like 'anachronism' with the 's' dropped). For example,
"International Buusiness Machines (tm) is the anacronym of IBM (also tm)".

In a world where we're being abbreviated past all common sense by the
military and others who like to make us think that they know what's going on
and noone else does, I'd think there'd be some call for a real English 
(American, or any other ASCII language) word for anacronyms. Am I mistaken?
Am I in the wrong newsgroup? Or should I just call Willard Espy (not tm)
and ask him in person?
------------
respectfully, 
   -p