Backronyms and Street Names

Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 7:04 AM | Category: Language, Meryl's Notes Blog 1 comment

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all my Irish friends. I’m proudly wearing the green tee you see here (and the cold front came through Dallas today… go figure).

Picked up a new word related to words from Ted (whose book I’m currently enjoying — review forthcoming). Backronym is a backward acronym and Wikipedia provides a list. Backronym was coined in 1983. Why did it take me so long to hear of it?

To think I complained about living in a neighborhood where all the street names start with “West.” To make matters worse, some streets have two words (for example, West Street) while others like mine have one word (Weststreet, for example). And of course, there’s a street less than a mile from here that has the same name as mine without the “West.” Some people may mistake that street for mine thinking it’s W. Street.

But, it’s better than living on Psycho Path, a private lane in Traverse City, Michigan. See more wild names in the Street Names Contest Winners list. By the way, the name of my neighborhood also starts with “West.” Strangely, my friend lives on the one street here that’s not named West.

From the sponsor: Is there an “Irish” look? Maybe the Los Angeles plastic surgeon can perform magical work.

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