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Quiz about All About Acronyms
Quiz about All About Acronyms

All About Acronyms Trivia Quiz


An acronym is a special type of abbreviation, one that is pronounced as a word and not as individual letters; for example, BETA is an acronym, VHS is not.

A multiple-choice quiz by MotherGoose. Estimated time: 5 mins.
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Author
MotherGoose
Time
5 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
307,881
Updated
Jul 23 22
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
1835
Awards
Top 20% Quiz
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Question 1 of 10
1. The term "acronym" was coined in 1943 by an American organisation whose name is practically synonymous with telecommunications. Which of the following companies added this word to our lexicon? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. In recent years, another related term has been created - "backronym" - to describe an acronym that has been specifically constructed to fit a pre-existing word. Which of the following is a backronym? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. An interesting medical acronym is Apgar. What does an Apgar score assess? Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. Who coined the acronym 'scuba' (self contained underwater breathing apparatus)? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. Which of the following national airline names is an acronym? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Which of the following acronyms refers to the first general-purpose electronic computer, also known as "the Great Brain"? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. Which of the following acronyms refers to an economic union of European countries? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. In the United Kingdom, the police named their computer system after which of the following characters? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. Which very popular television show is known by a four-letter acronym and is both a comedy and a drama about two wars that the United States was involved in?

Answer: (One word; 4 letters, no punctuation)
Question 10 of 10
10. When using an acronym in a sentence, the acronym should always be written in lower case as if it was a "normal" word; for example, laser and scuba (not LASER and SCUBA).



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. The term "acronym" was coined in 1943 by an American organisation whose name is practically synonymous with telecommunications. Which of the following companies added this word to our lexicon?

Answer: Bell Laboratories

Although acronyms existed prior to 1943, there was no term to describe them until staff at Bell Laboratories coined the term to describe a word that is derived by taking the first letter of each word in a phrase to create an abbreviation that becomes a new word.

The term acronym is formed from the combining form acro- (Greek: "akros" meaning tip or end) and the suffix -nym (Greek: "onyma" meaning name). That is, an acronym is formed by taking the "tip" or first letter(s) of each word.
2. In recent years, another related term has been created - "backronym" - to describe an acronym that has been specifically constructed to fit a pre-existing word. Which of the following is a backronym?

Answer: golf

According to Wikipedia, the term backronym was first used in a 1983 Washington Post article where it was defined as the 'same as an acronym, except that the words were chosen to fit the letters'. In fact, a backronym was created for the term acronym - A Capitalised Representation Of Names You Memorize!

Some say that the word golf was coined because it stood for "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden" but most sources say that it is actually derived from the old Scottish name for the game, gouf or gowf. Backronyms are often created for amusement; for example, to explain the origins of certain socially unacceptable words. There is no truth in the urban myth that a certain four-letter word stands for "fornication under consent of the king" or "for unlawful carnal knowledge".
3. An interesting medical acronym is Apgar. What does an Apgar score assess?

Answer: the health of a newborn

Strictly speaking, Apgar is an eponym, not an acronym. An eponym is a word formed from, or including, one or more names. The Apgar score was named after Dr Virginia Apgar who invented it in 1952. The Apgar score is determined by evaluating the baby on five criteria - skin colour, pulse rate, irritability or response to stimulation, muscle tone and breathing.

In order to remember these criteria, an acronym was eventually created to fit them - Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration. Another acronym that was created to fit is American Pediatric Gross Assessment Record. So Apgar is an eponym, an acronym (or if you wish, a backronym) and a mnemonic (memory aid), all rolled into one!
4. Who coined the acronym 'scuba' (self contained underwater breathing apparatus)?

Answer: United States Navy personnel

The invention of the scuba diving gear that we commonly use today is largely attributable to Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan in 1942 by virtue of their invention of the 'demand regulator'. In 1943, they began selling it under the name "Aqua-Lung". But they did not coin the acronym 'scuba'.

The term actually predates their invention. Its usage been traced back to 1939; it was coined by United States Navy personnel to refer to their divers' rebreather sets.
5. Which of the following national airline names is an acronym?

Answer: All of these answers are acronyms

JAL stands for Japan Airlines Corporation, the national airline of Japan, and Lacsa (Spanish: Lineas Aereas Costarricenses, Sociedad Anonima) is the national airline of Costa Rica.

Qantas refers to Qantas Airways Limited, the national airline of Australia. The name was originally QANTAS, an acronym for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services".

My airline friends have many humorous acronyms for Qantas. Here are a few of them:
Queasy and Nauseous, Tired And Sick
Quick And Nasty Transportation, Australian Style
Quite A Neat Trick, Arriving Safely
Quite A Nice Trip, All Survived
There are quite a few more but they are not suitable to be printed here!
6. Which of the following acronyms refers to the first general-purpose electronic computer, also known as "the Great Brain"?

Answer: ENIAC

ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. It was designed and built in the 1940s at the University of Pennsylvania in response to military needs during the Second World War. UNIVAC (the UNIVersal Automatic Computer) was the first commercial computer.

It was designed by the same team who invented ENIAC but it was not produced until 1951. It was first used by the United States Census Bureau. COBOL and BASIC are programming languages, standing for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, and Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, respectively.
7. Which of the following acronyms refers to an economic union of European countries?

Answer: Benelux

OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is a cartel of 12 non-European countries. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is a military alliance currently comprising 28 members including the United States. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, pronounced Asian) is a political and economic organization of 10 Southeast Asian countries. Benelux is an economic union of three neighbouring European countries - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - the name being derived from the first two or three letters of each member's name.

It was established in 1958 to promote trade within that region.
8. In the United Kingdom, the police named their computer system after which of the following characters?

Answer: Holmes (after Sherlock Holmes, the great detective)

In Britain, HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) was the name given to the first information technology system which was to investigate serious crimes. It was established in 1986 and the database is used by the various police forces in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It was, of course, named after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, and is yet another example of a "backronym".
9. Which very popular television show is known by a four-letter acronym and is both a comedy and a drama about two wars that the United States was involved in?

Answer: MASH

M*A*S*H is both a medical drama and a comedy (sometimes a black comedy). Ostensibly it is about the Korean War but, according to some sources, it is also an allegory about the Vietnam War (which was still going on when the show first aired in 1972). It is based on a novel, "MASH" by Richard Hooker (published in 1968) and a movie of the same name (1970). M*A*S*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

The asterisks in the acronym serve no purpose - they first appeared in the movie posters, but they never appeared on screen in the movie and they never appeared in the original novel (although they did in the two sequels that Hooker wrote).
10. When using an acronym in a sentence, the acronym should always be written in lower case as if it was a "normal" word; for example, laser and scuba (not LASER and SCUBA).

Answer: False

This is false, although it may be true some of the time. An acronym tends to start life written in uppercase but eventually it may be reduced to lower case as the word formed becomes commonly used and people cease to think about it in terms of its individual components. We usually don't think about lasers in terms of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

However, if there is likely to be confusion between an acronym and the word it forms, the acronym will retain its capitalised form. An example of this is AIDS (as in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) and the word aids (as in medical aids to assist patients).
Source: Author MotherGoose

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