Abecedism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An initialism. rare
"1949 April 17, editorial in The Denver Post, quoted in Levette J. Davidson, “Folklore in Modern Speech”, in Louise Pound, “Miscellany”, in American Speech, Volume 25, Number 4, Duke University Press (December 1950), page 303, The tampering with our language, like so many other things, can be blamed on the Roosevelt new deal which created WPA, NRA, FDIC and so many other abecedisms."
Example
More examples"1949 April 17, editorial in The Denver Post, quoted in Levette J. Davidson, “Folklore in Modern Speech”, in Louise Pound, “Miscellany”, in American Speech, Volume 25, Number 4, Duke University Press (December 1950), page 303, The tampering with our language, like so many other things, can be blamed on the Roosevelt new deal which created WPA, NRA, FDIC and so many other abecedisms."
Etymology
Roughly a + b + c + d + -ism; compare abecedarium.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.