[ti:S.O.S. ¨C In Other Words, Help!]
[ar:Anna Matteo]
[al:Words and Their Stories]
[by:www.21voa.com]
[00:00.00]Now, the VOA Learning English program, Words and Their Stories.
[00:07.78]Different people have different ways of saying things ¨C 
[00:11.86]their own special expressions. 
[00:14.84]Each week we tell about some popular American expressions.
[00:19.83]What you are listening to is a call for help. 
[00:25.91]It is the Morse code distress signal S.O.S. 
[00:31.05]For years, telegraph operators used Morse code 
[00:36.59]to communicate across the country and around the world.
[00:41.08]A skilled operator could send and receive 30 or 40 words a minute. 
[00:47.92]In the language of Morse code, 
[00:50.77]the letter "S" is three short dots 
[00:54.26]and the letter "O" is three longer dashes. 
[00:58.66]Put them together and you have S.O.S.
[01:04.80]These sounds represent the international call for help 
[01:08.99]because they are easy to recognize. 
[01:11.68]Now, it is simply known as S.O.S.
[01:16.03]But many people think that S.O.S. stands for 
[01:22.18]"Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls." 
[01:26.08]It does not. S.O.S. has come to mean that because of how we use it ¨C 
[01:32.83]when we need to be saved, as when a ship is sinking.
[01:37.37]S.O.S. is an example of a new, if somewhat unofficial, 
[01:43.58]word in the English language. 
[01:45.78]We call it a backronym. 
[01:48.73]A backronym is a combination of two words: backward and acronym.
[01:55.51]An acronym is an abbreviation, 
[01:58.76]a shorter version of a long word or expression. 
[02:02.70]For example, the word "scuba" is an acronym. 
[02:07.10]It stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. 
[02:13.60]But scuba is so much easier to say!
[02:17.14]Backronyms, on the other hand, are built in the opposite way. 
[02:22.27]They are made by creating a phrase 
[02:25.38]or expression for an already existing word or acronym.
[02:30.43]For example, the United States Department of Justice 
[02:34.93]recently gave new meaning to its Amber Alert program. 
[02:39.87]Now, Amber officially stands for 
[02:43.51]"America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response." 
[02:48.60]But the program was originally named for Amber Hagerman, 
[02:53.29]a nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped and murdered in Texas in 1996.
[02:59.37]Sometimes, backronyms come from outdated language. 
[03:04.67]Writing "CC" at the end of a document once meant "carbon copy." 
[03:11.01]Before computers and email, 
[03:13.81]people would often make a carbon copy 
[03:16.81]of a letter they sent on official business. 
[03:19.56]These days we often send electronic copies of letters by email, 
[03:25.05]not carbon copies. 
[03:26.79]So, "CC" is now a backronym that means "courtesy copy"
[03:32.77]Americans often use backronyms as jokes. 
[03:37.46]For example, NASA, the U.S. space agency, 
[03:42.11]named a treadmill on the International Space Station 
[03:46.00]after the television personality Stephen Colbert. 
[03:50.20]The agency created the name 
[03:52.60]"Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill" 
[03:58.33]to spell out the name COLBERT.
[04:00.67]Who says scientists lack a sense of humor?
[04:04.71]Do not worry if you have never heard of backronyms. 
[04:09.75]Many Americans have not either. 
[04:12.49]The earliest known use of "backronym" 
[04:16.24]appeared in The Washington Post in 1983.
[04:20.14]The newspaper asked readers to send in a new word. 
[04:24.68]Editors picked Meredith G. Williams as the winner with her word, 
[04:30.93]"backronym," spelled with or without a "k." 
[04:34.72]She defined backronym, as the "same as an acronym, 
[04:39.41]except that the words were chosen to fit the letters."
[04:43.15]And that brings us to the end of this Words and Their Stories program.
[04:48.04]I'm Anna Matteo.
[04:49.90]Hmmm, "ANNA" could be a backronym for "Another Newscaster Named Anna."
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