initialism

Noun

1. A term formed from the initial letters of several words or parts of words, which is itself pronounced letter by letter.
   • The term BBC is an initialism for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

   Synonyms: alphabetism

   Hypernyms: acronym[Appendix:Glossary abbreviation[Appendix:Glossary word

   Coordinate Terms: acronym[Appendix:Glossary

2. The process of forming words or terms using initial letters of other words.
   • The next most frequent source language was English, with neologistic compounds accounting for 15 etymologies, with 9 other English-based terms from a variety of word formation processes such as initialism and semantic...