recursive acronym
:recursive acronym:: n. 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
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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