Numeronym
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A numeronym is a number based word.
Most commonly a numeronym is a word where the number is used to form an abbreviation (albeit not an acronym or an initialism), such as "K9" for "canine" (phonetically: "kay" + "nine"), "I18N" for "Internationalization", and (in French) "K7" for "cassette" (phonetically: "ka" + "sept"). Less commonly, a numeronym is composed entirely of numbers, such as "212" for "New Yorker", "411" for "information", and "911" for "help".
According to Tex Texin, the first numeronym of the more common kind was "S12n", the electronic mail account name given to DEC employee Jan Scherpenhuizen by a system administrator because his surname was too long to be an account name. Colleagues who found Jan's name unpronounceable often referred to him orally as 'S12n'. The use of such numeronyms became part of the DEC corporate culture, with "i18n" being spawned there in 1985.1
Numeronyms in the sense of words composed entirely of numbers date from far earlier than the events at DEC, however, with "7-11" having used its name since 1946 and 10-code having been in use since before World War II.
Moreover, according to Anne H. Soukhanov, editor of the new Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary, a numeronym originally was "a telephone number that spells a word or a name" on a telephone dial, and only later came to be the more general concept of a word some or all of which was composed of digits rather than letters.2
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[edit] References
- Tex Texin. Origin Of The Abbreviation I18n. Retrieved on September 14, 2005.
- Jeffrey McQuain. Screening the Novel Words of Harry Potter. Retrieved on September 14, 2005.
