Radar is an acronym from the English expression "radio detection and ranging."
An acronym is a type of acronym whose pronunciation is done in the same way as a word. Acronyms, on the other hand, are the terms that are made up of the first letters of the concepts that form an expression.
An example of an acronym is radar . The origin of this notion is in the acronym that comes from the English Radio Detection and Ranging : ( RA )dio ( D )etection ( A )nd ( R )anging. Being an acronym, radar is used like any word and can even be named in the plural ( radars ). Some use cases: “The malfunction of a radar forced the airport to close for five hours,” “The government announced that it will buy new radars to control the borders.”
Another Spanish acronym is AIDS . In this case, the concept comes from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome . The acronym can be used in expressions such as “There are many organizations that fight to combat AIDS” or “The singer contracted AIDS in his adolescence.”
Acronyms from the union of words
It should be noted that acronyms are also the terms that are created by linking the parts of two or more words. That is the case of office automation , a word created from office and computing . The acronym is made up of the first three letters of office ( offi ) and the last six of computer science ( matic ): “We have invested a lot of money in new office automation tools,” “My grandfather started an office automation course yesterday.”
Emoticon , from the English emotion and icon , is also an acronym: “I like to complement my messages on social networks with emoticons” , “How nice the emoticon you sent me with your greeting!” .
The meaning
In these last two cases, as well as in many others, it is important to highlight that the meaning of the acronym also borrows parts of the definitions of the words that compose it, and not just fragments of their orthographic structures. For example, the term office automation refers to the use of computing to complement the tasks of an office , and also to the group of computer programs and components used in this work environment.
Something similar can be seen in the acronym telematics , which is formed by taking the first four letters of the term telecommunications and the last six of computing . In this case, we are dealing with a concept that refers to the discipline of science and technology that is dedicated to the analysis and implementation of applications and services for use in the fields of telecommunications and computer systems, something possible thanks to the fusion of both fields.
The computer acronym is formed with the terms "information" and "automatic."
Informatics, a widely used acronym
And we must not forget one of the most used acronyms today, which has gone unnoticed in several of the previous paragraphs: computing , which was born from the union between information and automation . This is a particularly useful term for understanding the phenomenon of combining meanings that occurs when constructing an acronym.
How many people, outside the field of systems or not, are able to find the right words to define the word computing? The acronym itself is so concise that it does not seem to require further explanation, and this demonstrates the effectiveness of its structure, something that should be taken as the fundamental objective of any acronym.
This does not always happen, especially when people begin to use acronyms from foreign languages without knowing their exact meanings, and then pass them on to their family and friends, who perhaps further distort their use until they give them new meanings. It is worth mentioning that, in any case, this also happens with words of their own language : in general, the younger generations adopt new ways of speaking, composed of expressions, terms and acronyms unknown to their parents and grandparents, and the latter do not They always understand them correctly, but they do not hesitate to add them to their vocabulary .