recursive acronym


recursive acronym

(convention)A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is tochoose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously tothemselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations. The classicexamples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is NotEmacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). Morerecently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (LiarImitates Apply Recursively), and GNU stands for "GNU's NotUnix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expandsto "Cygnus, Your GNU Support".

See also mung.

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.