The agency created the name ' Combined Operational Load- Bearing External Resistance Treadmill' to spell out the name COLBERT. space agency, named a treadmill on the International Space Station after the television personality Stephen Colbert. So, 'CC' is now a backronym that means 'courtesy copy'Īmericans often use backronyms as jokes. These days we often send electronic copies of letters by email, not carbon copies. Writing 'CC' at the end of a document once meant 'carbon copy.' Before computers and email, people would often make a carbon copy of a letter they sent on official business. Sometimes, backronyms come from outdated language.

Now, Amber officially stands for ' America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.' But the program was originally named for Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped and murdered in Texas in 1996. They are made by creating a phrase or expression for an already existing word or acronym.įor example, the United States Department of Justice recently gave new meaning to its Amber Alert program.

But scuba is so much easier to say!īackronyms, on the other hand, are built in the opposite way. It stands for self- contained underwater breathing apparatus. For example, the word 'scuba' is an acronym.

A backronym is a combination of two words: backward and acronym.Īn acronym is an abbreviation, a shorter version of a long word or expression. is an example of a new, if somewhat unofficial, word in the English language. has come to mean that because of how we use it – when we need to be saved, as when a ship is sinking. stands for 'Save Our Ship' or 'Save Our Souls.' It does not. 2014 PHOTO by Povleakhena/VOA Khmer)īut many people think that S.O.S. These people in Cambodia write 'SOS' on a roof so that planes flying overhead will see it and send help.

What does sos mean in morse code