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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A coworker, “Bob” (who has a mild word-jumble speech impediment, which is actually quite helpful in this regard) just came up with this little accidental gem. Another coworker, “Alice”, was telling us about her shock when yesterday her young son said the “F wordâ€, and Bob mentioned how said word was a Ye Olde Englishe acronym for “fornication under command/consent of the Kingâ€, a.k.a. generalized “porking privileges†for the king’s knights, the better to breed the next generation of soldiers. (The purported origin is in fact apocryphal, but that’s moot in the present context). Anyhoo, the word “acronym†got slightly jumbled when he said it – he didn’t even notice the slip until I congratulated him on his cleverness – into “anacronymâ€.
So here the linguistic particulars:
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anacronym
Function: noun
Origin: 23. October 2009 Silicon Valley water-cooler conversation.
Etymology: Conflation of “anachronism†and “acronymâ€.
Definition: An abbreviation which has fallen into disuse, or whose origins have been obscured by time.
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Cheers,
-Ernst
Last edited by ewmayer (2009-10-30 17:40:17)
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Welcome to the forum, Ernst. “Anacronym” was posted in 2007 by Craig Clarke (link) and came up again in a post about “anachronism” (“link”). The juicier the eggcorn or word blend, the greater the risk that someone has stumbled across it in the past.
Last edited by David Bird (2009-10-30 19:07:26)
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