anacronym
/əˈnæk.ɹə.nɪm/
anacronym noun: an acronym that is usually no longer thought of as such, but instead treated as a regular word and styled in lower case despite its etymological origin.
Noun
anacronym (plural anacronyms)
- An acronym that is usually no longer thought of as such, but instead treated as a regular word and styled in lower case despite its etymological origin.
- When you write about using a waterproof laser pointer while scuba diving, you probably aren’t going to write about “a L.A.S.E.R. pointer for S.C.U.B.A. diving”, because the words laser and scuba are anacronyms.
Forms of anacronym
| plural | anacronyms |
|---|
Origin of anacronym
Perhaps blend of anachronism + acronym but perhaps an- + acronym, in either case indicating an acronymic word that has lost much of its acronymic identity because people usually no longer focus on the etymonic origin when using the word.
Words formed from anacronym
Words that rhyme with anacronym
Questions about anacronym
- What does anacronym mean?
- Anacronym means an acronym that is usually no longer thought of as such, but instead treated as a regular word and styled in lower case despite its etymological origin.
- What part of speech is anacronym?
- Anacronym is a noun.
- How do you pronounce anacronym?
- Anacronym is pronounced /əˈnæk.ɹə.nɪm/.
- What is the plural of anacronym?
- The plural of anacronym is anacronyms.
Words near anacronym in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: anacronym (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “anacronym.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anacronym. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.