1 : TLA
2 : Background
3 : Description
4 : Common categories of TLAs
5 : Lists of TLAs
6 : Related articles
The TLA ('t''hree-letter abbreviation''' or 'a''cronym) is the most popular type of abbreviation in computing and telecom terminology, and is also common in political jargon. Some of these, such as "DOS", are strict acronyms, while others, like "TLA" itself, are initialisms; this distinction is not universally accepted (see the latter article for a discussion), but leads to the use of abbreviation as opposed to acronym in expanding the term.
Background
"TLA" is, of course, a TLA itself; the term was almost certainly coined with a certain degree of self-referential humor in mind (see backronym). Likewise, a four-letter abbreviation (e.g., VERA) is sometimes known as an ETLA''' (Extended TLA) or a TLA/E (TLA/Extended). Both terms are of the same humor: the word "ETLA" is an ETLA.
TLAs became common in the United States during the New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was, and still is, himself often referred to as "FDR"). Terms from this period included NRA for National Recovery Administration, and TVA for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Detractors of President Roosevelt's policies called the new agencies "alphabet soup."
Description
Using only upper-case letters, there are 26³ = 17576 possible three-letter abbreviations, and probably most of them are already used in some context. If numbers, special characters, or case-sensitivity are allowed, even more TLAs can be created.
Many TLAs have more than one meaning. There are many TLAs with more than 10 meanings (for example, SDI has at least 32 meanings in the English language). Many abbreviations have more than one expansion with the same meaning. For example GCC was first 'GNU C Compiler', and later 'GNU Compiler Collection'.
In the MS-DOS operating system for personal computers, because only three-letter file extensions (usually denoting the file type) were allowed, many longer abbreviations were shortened to three letters (for example JPEG to JPG, HTML to HTM). Many abbreviations, some of them TLAs, come from the shortened names of Usenet groups. For example pra for pl.rec.anime.
Common categories of TLAs
- corporations: IBM, DEC
- countries: USA, GDR
- file types: PNG, GIF, PDF
- computer hardware: CPU, FPU, RAM, ROM
- computer software: GCC, GTK
- computer software licences: GPL, MPL
- operating systems: GNU, BSD, DOS
- other standards: UTC
- programming languages: PHP, SQL
- communications protocols: FTP, IRC
- time zones: GMT, UTC, DST
- sports: NFL, NBA, MLB
- politics: GOP, DNC, NDP
- government: DOD, DOE, HUD, IRS
- military: SAS, APC, POW
- medicine: AAA, MRI, TOE
A significant number of TLAs come from various codes:
- IATA airport codes: SFO, MSQ, NGO (see Lists of TLAs, below)
- ISO 4217 currency codes: RUR, USD
- SIL codes for languages: ENG, FRN, SWD, BQT
- IOC country codes: FRA, GBR, GER, JAP (see Lists of TLAs)
Lists of TLAs
Related articles
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