Sunday, July 26, 2009

Get backronym where you once belong

Smitty and I like our backronyms. Unfortunately, so do governments.
A terrible example popped up Sunday in Commentary Magazine's contentions blog. Britain has a National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
How about some truth in advertising, guys?
How about Democrats for Excellence in Academics, Transportation and Health (DEATH)? They can have a banquet and be DEATH eaters. (Yes, I just saw Harry Potter 6 and we picked up the Harry Potter 7 book.) Check out the cool masks.



1 comment:

smitty1e said...

I may need to engage in some etymological sparring.
I'm fairly sure that a backronym is a post-facto, typically derogatory, effort carried out upon an existing acronym or word, e.g. Fix Or Repair Daily (FORD).
The penchant for building an acronym to sell a program is called marketing.