Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase. For example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr. or abbrev that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO A chief executive officer or chief executive is one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators in charge of total management. An individual selected as president and CEO of a corporation, company, organization, or agency, reports to the board of directors) or parts of words (as in Benelux The Benelux is a union in Western Europe that comprises three neighbouring countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg , which lie in the north western European region between France and Germany. The name is formed from the beginning of each country's name; it was possibly created for the Benelux Customs Union, although according to The). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature), nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). While popular in recent English, such abbreviations have historical use in English as well as other languages. As a type of word formation In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The line between word formation and semantic change is sometimes a bit blurry; what one person views as a new use of an old word, another person might view as a new word derived process, acronyms and initialisms are viewed as a subtype of blending In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.
