By contrast a backronym is constructed by taking an existing word already in common usage and creating a new phrase using the letters in the word as the initial letters of the words in the phrase. For example the United States Department of Justice assigns to their Amber Alert program the meaning "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response"4 although the term originally referred to Amber Hagerman a 9-year-old abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996. Examples

Backronyms can be constructed for educational purposes for example to form mnemonics. An example of such a mnemonic is the Apgar score used to assess the health of newborn children. The rating system was devised by and named after Virginia Apgar but ten years after the initial publication the backronym APGAR was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: Appearance Pulse Grimace Activity and Respiration.5

Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs use backronyms as teaching tools similar to slogans such as "one day at a time" or "Let go let God" but often with an ironic edge. For example a slip may be expanded as "Sobriety Losing Its Priority"6 and denial as "Don't Even Notice I Am Lying."7

Backronyms are also created as jokes often expressing consumer loyalties or frustration. For example the name of the restaurant chain Arby's is a play on "RB" referring to "roast beef" as well as the company's founders the Raffel brothers. An advertising campaign in the 1980s created a backronym with the slogan "Americas Roast Beef Yes Sir!"8

Many companies or products spawn multiple humorous backronyms with positive connotations asserted by supporters or negative ones by detractors. For example Ford the car company founded by Henry Ford was said to stand for "First on Race Day" among aficionados9 but disparaged as "Fix Or Repair Daily" and "Found On Road Dead" by critics.10 False acronyms

Sometimes the backronym is so commonly heard that it is widely but incorrectly believed to have been used in the formation of the word and amounts to a folk etymology or an urban legend. Examples include posh an adjective describing stylish items or members of the upper class. A popular story derives the word as an acronym from "Port Out Starboard Home" referring to first class cabins shaded from the sun on outbound voyages east and homeward heading voyages west.11 The word's actual etymology is unknown but it may relate to Romani p xra ("half-penny") or to Urdu safed-ph (one who wears "white robes") a derogatory term for wealthy people.12 Other examples include the brand name Adidas named for company founder Adolf "Adi" Dassler but falsely believed to be an acronym for "All Day I Dream About Sports";13 wiki said to mean "What I Know Is"14 but in fact derived from the Hawaiian phrase wiki wiki meaning "fast;"15 or Yahoo! incorrectly claimed to mean "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" but in fact chosen because Yahoo's founders liked the meaning of the word itself.16 As lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower points out in his book The F-Word acronyms were rare prior to the twentieth century and most etymologies of common words or phrases that suggest origin from an acronym are false.17 See also Acronymization Acrostic Retronym Recursive acronym Mnemonics References a b McFedries Paul. "bacronym". Word Spy: The World Lover's Guide to New Words. WordSpy.com. http://www.wordspy.com/words/bacronym.asp. Retrieved 2009-05-19.  "Acronym". Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/acronym. Retrieved 2006-11-15.  NASA. "RADAR means: Radio Detection and Ranging". Nasa Explores. Archived from the original on 2007-10-14. http://web.archive.org/web/20071014061010/http://nasaexplores.com/showk4teacherst.phpid030703122033.  "AMBER Alert - America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response". Amberalert.gov. 2007-11-01. http://www.amberalert.gov/. Retrieved 2010-07-08.  "The Virginia Apgar Papers - Obstetric Anesthesia and a Scorecard for Newborns 1949-1958". U.S. National Library of Medicine NIH. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CP/Views/Exhibit/narrative/obstetric.html. Retrieved 2008-11-18.  Keep Coming Back: Humor and Wisdom for Living and Loving Recovery by Meiji Stewart Google Books Result. Hazelden Publishing. 1999. ISBN 9781568383781. http://books.google.com/booksidgf4y3fdElKgC&pgPA79&dq%22Sobriety+losing+its+priority%22&eiBAV0SIGOM4fKjgGntpTpBw&clientfirefox-a&sigACfU3U2KMTloFo6yCCL2D3du4cSScFzF2w. Retrieved 2008-07-08.  Lord Wolf Designs. "Recovery Related Acronyms and Meanings for A.A. & N.A. use". 12-steps-recovery.com. http://12-steps-recovery.com/library/acronyms.html. Retrieved 2010-07-08.  Gross Daniel (2009-11-07). "Too Much Beef: Why Arby's is so low on the restaurant food chain.". Slate.com. http://www.slate.com/id/2234863/. Retrieved 2010-07-08.  "Drag Racing's Internet Magazine". Competition Plus.com. http://www.competitionplus.com/200607/dickbrannan.html. Retrieved 2010-07-08.  ConsumerNet Inc.. "Automotive Humor Car Jokes". Carbuyingtips.com. http://www.carbuyingtips.com/humor.htm. Retrieved 2010-07-08.  Quinion Michael (2005). Port Out Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-101223-4. ; published in the US as Quinion Michael (2006). Ballyhoo Buckaroo and Spuds. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-085153-8.  "posh adj. and n.". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009.  All Day I Dream About Sport: The Story of the Adidas Brand ISBN 1904879128 "The wiki principle". Economist.com. 2006-04-20. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfmstoryid6794228. Retrieved 2006-11-15.  "wiki - Definitions from Dictionary.com". http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wiki. Retrieved 2006-11-15.  "The History of Yahoo! - How It All Started...". Yahoo.com. http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html. Retrieved 2010-08-24.  Sheidlower Jesse (2009). The F-Word. New York: Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0195393112.  External links Backronym expansions of ACRONYM (Acronym Finder) Online Backronym Generator