In Roman inscriptions, 'Words were commonly abbreviated by using the initial letter or letters of words, and most inscriptions have at least one abbreviation'. In both Greece and Rome the reduction of words to single letters was common. This might be done to save time and space (given that many inscriptions were carved in stone) and also to provide secrecy.

They were created to avoid spelling out whole words.

Examples of contractions are 'li'l' (for 'little'), 'I'm' (for 'I am'), and 'he'd've' (for 'he would have').Ībbreviations have a long history. Often, but not always, the contraction includes the first and last letters or elements. Consequently, contractions are a subset of abbreviations. FBI ( /ˌɛf.biːˈaɪ/), USA ( /ˌjuː.ɛsˈeɪ/), IBM ( /ˌaɪ.biːˈɛm/), BBC ( /ˌbiː.biːˈsiː/)Ī contraction is a reduction in the length of a word or phrase made by omitting certain of its letters or syllables. : p167Īn initialism is an abbreviation pronounced by spelling out each letter, i.e. Some types of abbreviations are acronyms (some pronounceable, some initialisms) or grammatical contractions or crasis.Īn abbreviation is a shortening by any of these or other methods.Īcronyms, initialisms, contractions and crasis share some semantic and phonetic functions, and all four are connected by the term 'abbreviation' in loose parlance. It may also consist of initials only, a mixture of initials and words, or words or letters representing words in another language (for example, e.g., i.e.

NPO, for nil (or nothing) per (by) os (mouth) is an abbreviated medical instruction. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase for example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv., or abbrev. Example of 15th-century Latin manuscript text with scribal abbreviationsĪn abbreviation (from Latin brevis code: lat promoted to code: la, meaning short ) is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method.

Letter abbreviations for words