Full FormsFull forms that are not real
Many "full forms" passed around in messages and even printed in guide books were made up long after the word existed. The words below are ordinary words, not abbreviations.
The invented expansions are called backronyms: someone takes an existing word and fits a phrase to its letters. They are harmless as a memory game. The trouble starts when they are taught as facts and turn up in quiz answers. A simple test exposes most of them: abbreviations made from initials became common only in the last hundred and fifty years or so, while words like news, police and tea are many centuries old. A word older than the habit of making initials cannot have begun as initials.
| Word | The invented full form | Where the word really comes from |
|---|---|---|
| NEWS | North, East, West, South | The word comes from "new": news is new information. It has been used in English since the Middle Ages, long before the idea of initials. |
| POLICE | Public Officer for Legal Investigations and Criminal Emergencies | The word came into English from French, and goes back to the Greek "polis", city, the same root as "policy" and "politics". |
| COMPUTER | Commonly Operated Machine Particularly Used for Technical and Educational Research | A computer is something that computes. The word was first used for people who did calculations. |
| CHESS | Chariot, Horse, Elephant, Soldiers | The word comes through Old French from the Persian "shah", king, the same root as "check". |
| TEA | Taste and Energy Admitted | The word comes from "te" in the Min Chinese of the Fujian coast, carried to Europe by Dutch traders. "Chai" comes from the Mandarin "cha". |
| INDIA | Independent Nation Declared In August | The name comes from the river Indus, known to the Greeks and Persians thousands of years before 1947. |
| MATHS | Mentally Attempted Tough and Hard Sums | Short for mathematics, from the Greek "mathema", something learned. |
| PEN | Power Enriched in Nib | From the Latin "penna", feather, because pens were once made from quills. |
| GOLF | Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden | The word is an old Scots one, probably related to a Dutch word for club. |
| WIFE | Worries Invited For Ever | A joke. "Wife" is an Old English word that simply meant woman. |
| DATE | Day And Time Evolution | From the Latin "data", given, used in the dating of Roman letters. |
| BYE | Be With You Every time | "Goodbye" is a shortening of "God be with ye". |
| SMILE | Sweet Memories In Lips Expression | An ordinary English word of Scandinavian origin. |
| LOVE | Life's Only Valuable Emotion | An Old English word; the expansion is a greeting-card invention. |
| ARMY | Alert Regular Mobility Young | From the Latin "armata", armed. |
| BOOK | Bio Optical Organised Knowledge | From an Old English word related to "beech", the tree whose wood was used for writing tablets. |
Names that look like abbreviations but are not
Some names are written in capitals or have a technical look, and people assume there must be a phrase behind them.
- Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi is a brand name of the Wi-Fi Alliance for wireless networking. It is often expanded as "Wireless Fidelity", but that phrase was only an early advertising slogan.
- FASTag: FASTag is the brand name of India's electronic toll tag. It is a name, not an abbreviation.
- OK: The most widely accepted origin is "oll korrect", a joke spelling of "all correct" from Boston newspapers of 1839.
- SOS: The international distress signal in Morse code. The letters were chosen because they are easy to send, not as initials; "Save Our Souls" was attached later.
Real ones that sound invented
The opposite also happens. LASER, RADAR, SONAR and SCUBA really are initials, and CAPTCHA really does stand for a long phrase, though it was built to resemble the word "capture". The entries for these are on the science and computer pages.
What to write in an examination
If a school paper asks for the "full form of computer" and your textbook gives the invented one, the marking scheme probably expects it; write what your book says, and know for yourself that it is not the origin of the word. In competitive examinations set by national bodies, such invented expansions are rarely asked, because the question setters know they are not real.
How to check a full form yourself
- Look at the organisation's own website or letterhead for the name it uses.
- For an ordinary word, look up its origin in a good dictionary. If the dictionary gives a history in Latin, Greek, French or Old English, it is not an abbreviation.
- Be suspicious of expansions that are jokes, compliments or moral lessons. Real names are usually dull.