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There is a whiteboard near me with a "Word of the day". Today's word is "G.A.R.P." Does this count as a word? Is an acronym a word?

user67987
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    Sometimes. Snafu. Foobar. Zip code. – Elliott Frisch Mar 06 '14 at 17:18
  • I believe it only qualifies as an acronym if it is used as a word. 'RADAR' is an acronym as we talk of 'radar'. But USA, or BBC are not acronyms because no one says them as though they were words. There is an extensive Wki article on acronyms which is very interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Comparing_a_few_examples_of_each_type – WS2 Mar 06 '14 at 17:33
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    @ElliottFrisch Fubar not foobar. The u stands for up. – David M Mar 06 '14 at 17:38
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    @David: That really depends what you want it to mean. By far the most common usage in recent decades is the "function placeholder name", correctly spelled *foobar. Personally, my* most common usage is for the excellent Foobar audio player more fully known as *Foobar2000*. – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '14 at 18:03
  • @fumblefingers Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. If you're going to point to it as an example of an acronym turned word … otherwise, foobar is an acceptable derivative. I accept that spelling as an onomatopoeic rendering. – David M Mar 06 '14 at 18:07
  • @David: No no. The programming one isn't some kind of misspelling derived from that (hopelessly dated, imho) WW2 slang term (not so far as *I'm* concerned, at least). It's partly chosen (and definitely, survives), because we often use it in "compare & contrast" contexts - two functions foo() and bar(), for example. And in "function foo() calls function bar()", etc. – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '14 at 18:13
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    @FumbleFingers Are you sure that wasn't an attempt to shoehorn comedy into programming? – David M Mar 06 '14 at 18:17
  • Anyway, I'm always up for closing questions of the general form "Is XXX an adverb?" in favour of What exactly is an “adverb”?. I'm starting to think someone should post the question What exactly is an “word”? just to accomdate this unending stream of POB questions. – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '14 at 18:17
  • @David: I can't be sure, no. But nor can anyone else. If you ask me, it might well have owed something to Pooh-Bah in G&S The Mikado. But it's all just idle speculation that has no bearing on current usage. Bear in mind that even if someone claims he actually invented the usage, he could be lying, exaggerating, or totally mistaken. And even if it could be proved that so-and-so first used a term with some reason in mind, that might be irrelevant to why other people adopted the usage (which is after all what counts). – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '14 at 18:21
  • @FumbleFingers closing as POB was my initial reaction, too. But, I decided that there was a rich enough fund of examples to make this question answerable without delving strictly into opinion. I believe I managed to represent that in my answer with perhaps one piece of opinion thrown in. – David M Mar 06 '14 at 19:03
  • @David: Well they do say "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck" it's probably a good enough decoy to fool the real ducks if you're going hunting. Not being American, I don't have a gun (either for self-protection or duck-shooting), so I'd just wring its neck, pluck it and roast it. It's much like homeopathy or religion (or "money", at the ontological level) - if you believe it's real, it is real. But I'm not sure garp can really be a "real word" for me personally, since I've no idea what it's supposed to mean, and OED refuses to give any clues. – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '14 at 21:02
  • @Fumble Not a word yet. – David M Mar 06 '14 at 21:08
  • @David: I would not wish to work for a company paying good money (that should at least partly be going into my salary) for some twat to come up with a meaningless "word of the day" on a regular basis. Even if it did turn out later that one of these words was in fact the word of god. – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '14 at 21:37

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The answer is sometimes. As Elliott points out in comments, there are many acronyms which have come to be accepted as words. In many cases the original acronym is all but forgotten. (e.g. radar, laser).

But, you can make an argument that upon their acceptance as a word, they cease to function as an acronym. This logic is similar to borrowing a word from another language. These words often change their spelling, capitalization, and usage to fit their new host language.

Most acronyms that become ersatz words are changed to follow typical conventions for capitalization. A good example is the word scuba. This is a word that comes from the acronym SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus). Note that it is perfectly acceptable to use the all lowercase spelling, and this word can become an adjective now, (e.g. scuba diver).

So, the short answer. Yes, you can treat an acronym like a word. And, if you do it for long enough, it may lose all sense of being an acronym altogether.

David M
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Apple built in OS X Dictionary:

word: a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

If you look at that definition and then at the following sentence:

NASA launched a shuttle today.

Means NASA, an acronyn, is used as a word, in place of a number of words. So yes an acronym is a word.

Community
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DisplayName
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This depends upon your definition of "word". An acronym is an abbreviation (or an initialism) which is pronounced as a word, and if one is being paid by the word (such as a novelist would be), I'd have to say that an acronym is a word for that purpose.

What is "G.A.R.P." stand for, anyway? There was a very painful movie by that name some years ago, "The World According to Garp", except in that case it was proper name.

Cyberherbalist
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