What is a Recursive Acronym?

A recursive Acronym is an acronym where the first letter is the acronym itself. For example, GNU stands for “GNU’s Not Unix.” The acronym can be multiplied to more than one copies of itself in infiNity. Recursive acronyms are used in some names of Software Program initiatives for a funny impact, following the Instance of Richard Stallman’s GNU task.

What Does Recursive Acronym Mean?

A recursive acronym embeds a replica of itself within the acronym. One of the first-rate acknowledged examples is Richard Stallman’s GNU undertaking. GNU stands for “GNU’s Not Unix.” That copy in flip carries the word GNU, so the acronym is infinitely recursive. In GNU’s case, the acronym is a play on phrases: GNU isn't always Unix in the experience that it does no longer have any Code Relationship to the unique Bell Labs Unix, but the conduct of GNU tries to mimic Unix structures as carefully as feasible.

While Stallman popularized the usage of recursive acronyms in the loose and Open Source Software program groups for humorous effect, the practice became already hooked up in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, of which Stallman become a Component in the Nineteen SEventies and early Eighties. Two Lisp Machine Text Editors were named EINE (EINE Is Not Emacs) and ZWEI (ZWEI cHanged into EINE Initially). The latter blends two recursive acronyms.

Other well-known recursive acronyms encompass:

• WINE – WINE Is Not an Emulator
• Curl – cURL URL Request Library
• RPM – RPM Package Manager (previously Red Hat Package Manager)
• PHP – PHP Hypertext Processor