Ecursive Acronym N.
A Hackish (and Especially MIT)
Tradition Is To Choose Acronyms/abbreviations That Refer Humorously
To Themselves Or To Other Acronyms/abbreviations.
A hackish (and especially MIT)
tradition is to choose acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously
to themselves or to other acronyms/abbreviations. The classic
examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS")
and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a
Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and
GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" -- and a
company with the name Cygnus, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU
Support" (though Cygnus people say this is a backronym). See
also mung, EMACS.
