recursive acronym
(redirected from Circular acronym)recursive acronym
(convention)A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to
choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to
themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classic
examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not
Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More
recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar
Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's Not
Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands
to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support".
See also mung.
See also mung.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
recursive acronym
An acronym that is also one of the primary words in the definition. For example, GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix." Wine means "Wine Is Not an Emulator." See recursion, GNU and Wine.Copyright © 1981-2019 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.