Talk:List of English abbreviations made by shortening words

Untitled
It is better without citations, unless in doubtful cases perhaps. And then they should be added so that they don't spoil the look of the list. What do other people thenk? 62.64.227.56 23:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I respectfully disagree. Citations are integral to verifiablity. The look of the list can be tweaked to allow for the cites. But I think it more important that the list be verifiable than it be pretty. As well, define "doubtful". In this article, I find "stude" doubtful; others may find "po-mol" as an apocopation of "post-modern" doubtful, but at least it can be verified. Without cites the article is left open to all kinds of neologisms, vandalism, and utter nonsense. --SigPig 04:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability - anyone with google can do that. Doubtful: if it isn't supported by google, then a citation is needed. Po-mo is ubiquitous. Stude: from the OED stude, n. DRAFT ENTRY Mar. 2003 colloq. (orig. U.S.). Brit. /stjud/, /stud/, U.S. /st(j)ud/ [Shortened < STUDENT n.1] A student. 1912 Cornhusker in Dial. Notes (1914) 4 121 Sterilized water for the studes. Typhoid fever epidemic at its height. 1947 Book (Christchurch, N.Z.) 9 23 In Dunedin when I was still a stude. 1989 Rhythm Dec. 67/2 The stude crowd were strangely thin on the ground... I suppose they were all writing essays or something. 2002 Knowledge Aug. 70/4 This will appeal to everyone from studes to nerds. A complete and utter Banger!

Minn, Wisc, etc
Are these really apocopations or just abbreviations? Surely the criterion must be that the shortened forms are pronounced as written. The word "ad" is pronounced as one syllable, and not as "advertisement", and so is an apocopation; on the other hand, "misc." is pronounced "miscellaneous" and not to rhyme with "whisk", and so is an abbreviation.

I contend that "Minn", "Wisc", etc, fall into the second category and so do not belong on this page. I am from the UK so am not familiar with how these forms are used the US, but somehow I don't think they are true apocopations. Perhaps some US English speakers could provide some evidence either way. (Aside: In the UK, we have similar postal abbreviations for some long county names, such as Bucks, Wilts and Glos (Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, respectively). Some of these are sometimes pronounced as written, but I would be loath to say they were apocopations rather than just abbreviations. &mdash; Paul G 08:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Paedo
Due to blocking software I couldn't add paedo/pedo, which is a very common abbreviation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:4C8:140E:1E2A:1:1:377:F73D (talk) 02:18, 5 January 2019 (UTC)