Essay: Abbreviations History and Meaning

Abbreviations are known all over the world as the shortened form of a word which replaces the whole word or phrase. They became a part of our everyday life and people are using them when they communicate in written form with relatives, friends or colleagues, classmates and others. However, they are not used only in informal settings, as they became well known in the legal field, (AC – Appeal Cases, ALD – Administrative Law Decisions), medical field (HAPE – High altitude pulmonary edema, CT – Chemotherapy) or even in education (BA – Bachelor of Arts, EIP – Education Improvement Partnerships).
Abbreviations are language universals and their understanding depends much on the context and on the background knowledge. According to the Russian linguist Zerkina N. “they are not only of linguistic value but also of historical as they may contain archaic elements, being formed with ancient models of contraction.” [29, p.138] It is wrongly considered that abbreviations are a new phenomenon that developed mostly due to the growth of technology at a rapid rate and according to the British linguist David Crystal, “the popular belief is that texting has evolved as a twenty-first-century phenomenon – as a highly distinctive graphic style, full of abbreviations and deviant uses of language, used by a young generation that doesn’t care about standards”.[9, p.7] On the other hand there is real proof that alphabetic abbreviation was used around 1000 BC and it was very common between the 8th century BC and the 6th century AD, […] SPQR being and initialism for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the Roman people). Moreover, short forms such as IMP CAES (Imperator Caesar Emperor Caesar) were often used on inscriptions and coins. [30] Abbreviations are of different types and can be found in medieval manuscripts (e.g., DN for Dominus Noster), in ancient Greek inscriptions, and in the Qurʾān (e.g., B.H. for Before Hijrah). [31] According to Partington C. “Romans also used abbreviations and they were of three types:
1. Words and syllables were abbreviated, sigla;
2. One letter was substituted for another, for the purpose of secrecy;
3. Arbitrary signs were used, like those of mathematics.[…] The oldest and most common abbreviations are those of names, titles, and formulas as M. – Marcus, Ed.- adilis, Cos.- consul”. [33]
The main reason for creating abbreviation is a simple one and is related to the need of transmitting a great amount of information using fewer characters. In the 1st and 2nd century AD, Romans started issuing bronze coins that had on the verso some of the inscriptions as IMP – Imperor (emperor), PM,- PONT MAX (Greatest Priest) and in the 3rd century: INV – Invictus (undefeatable). [34]
Another reason that led to the creation of abbreviated forms was the nature of materials used and their availability such as stone, parchment, metal, paper. Moreover, there were fewer people that knew the art of writing and the scribes, copyists and engravers used every free space that was available to write more information.
The abbreviations in the English language trace their origin to the medieval scribes who used these shortened forms as mnemonic and also to save parchment, time and hard work. Short forms were transmitted together with Latin to European spoken languages. At the beginning they were borrowed, for example AD for Anno Domini then native terms were created as BC for Before Christ.
At the beginning of the 16th century the first English Bible was printed and the abbreviations were not an exception. The Holy book includes a great number of shortened words for names, places, designations of chapters, for example: Ps – Psalm, Gen 1-2 – Genesis chapters 1 through 2, Ep Jer – Epistle of Jeremiah. [8, p.124]
Most of the time abbreviations have to be concise, easy to remember and accessible for the user, but at the same time they don’t have to be completely understood in order to be used by English speakers. The most relevant example is “e.g.” with the full Latin form “exempli gratia” which is being used for centuries.
Many linguists tend to emphasize the role of the modern society in the creation of abbreviation, but as Arnold I.V states, the process of shortening was used back in the 15th century and as an example he brings the work of Shakespeare, namely Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 4 when he uses the name Gib instead of Gilbert. At the same time he admits that there was a rapid growth in the 20th century especially in the English Language [3, p.133].
Acronyms were used for the first time in the English language in the telegraphic code created by Walter P. Phillips for the United Press Association in 1879 that allowed people sending secret messages with the help of a telegraph. SCOTUS was the abbreviation for “Supreme Court of the United States” and POT as “President of the…” Since then, many other abbreviations were created with the help of that acronym and some are used even nowadays, such as FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States), COTUS (constitution of the US), POTUS (President of the US).
At the beginning of the 20th century there was an active process of creating abbreviations, namely during the two World Wars, such as BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The reason for developing acronyms and initialisms is very obvious – the transfer of secret information, the planning of different operations, etc.
The first written recording of initialisms in English is done by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 1899, but it came in the general use after 1965, when the acronyms were well known.
Nowadays, English became a source language for borrowing abbreviations even though, as the history shows us, it borrowed a great number of shortened terms from Latin and Greek, which are used even in the present days. As a language of international organisations such as UN, almost every name has its own abbreviation whose structure is kept in the target language.
1.2 Abbreviations – a Productive Way of Word Formation
No language in the world developed solely without interference from the outside world, without being influenced by cultural aspects or other languages. English is an obvious example of a language that expanded its vocabulary by penetrating other languages. For a long period of time, new words found their way into this language, carrying a certain geographical and chronological aspect, for example: gentle comes from medieval France, madrigal from Renaissance Italy, or outlaw from medieval Scandinavia. Patterns are needed in any language so that new words to be created on the basis of the existing ones.
Most often, the process of term formation is determined by the subject field, the nature of the persons involved, by the stimulus that caused the term formation and also by the phonological, morphosyntactical and lexical structures of the language in which the new concept finds its linguistic expression. There are three types of word formation in the English language: creating new forms, using existing forms and translingual borrowing. Therefore, abbreviation is a process through which new forms can be produced as they have the aim to be more concise and also easy to remember. [28] Acronymy, blending, clipping and onomatopoeia are the most important non-morphematic word-formation processes. On the other hand, some linguists as R. S. Ginzburg do not consider acronymy, blending, lexicalisation as means of word formation because “neither the derivational base nor the derivational affix can be singled out from the shortened word” [11, p.110].
There are different types of abbreviations and as a result they have a different way through which they produce new words to enrich the vocabulary, give new names to phenomena or inventions that occur in the world. The simplest one is shortening which resides in reducing a word to one of its part and thus it holds some linguistic value on its own. According to Arnold V.I., shortenings can be considered as the creation of a root, because the new morphemes can be used independently as free words or to create compounds. Two types of shortening are possible in the English language:
1) The shortened form can be considered a variant or a synonym of the full form, because it differs stylistically, quantitatively, and in some cases emotionally, as the full form is both stylistically and emotionally neutral. For example: exam – examination. The short form can always be substituted by the full form, thus the link between them is never lost as they are variants of the same word.
2) In the second case, only an etymological connection is possible. The shortened form can become a separate word as the lexico-grammatical or/and denotative meaning suffered an abrupt change. For example: fan – fanatic, fancy – fantasy. Due to these changes, during the history, the word fancy acquired some other meanings like amorous fondness and only the second entry in the dictionary shows that it is similar to the word fantasy.
In both cases, the clipped form and the full form exist in the language. The only difference is that abbreviations of first type may be easily substituted with their prototype, showing a certain degree of interchangeability, whilst the shortened words of the second type cannot be substituted in each context without a change of meaning. [3, p.137]
A specific type of word formation presented interest for many linguists and as a result, extensive research was done. Therefore it has several names, as blendings, blends, fusions or portmanteau words. According to Adams V. there are three ways in which blending may occur. The first group of words contains some elements which may remind of other similar words as squirl (a word that seems very close to squirm and twirl). Second group refers to words that seem to be compound, for example smog is created from smoke and fog, aerobatics is a combination of aero and acrobatics. The third group comprises the suffixed words as verbacious. There is recorded a small number of blended words in the 18th and 19th century, which means that it is a new phenomenon, developed mostly in the 20th century at least in the written language [1, p.139]. There is also a general rule that differentiate blended words from the clipped compound ones. In a clipping compound, the first part of the two words is represented in the new word, for instance midcult (middle culture), whilst in a blended compound the first part of the first word and the second part of the second word are represented, for example Spanglish (Spanish – English) [5, p.511].