Welcome to the home of Noah Brier. I'm the co-founder of Variance and general internet tinkerer. Most of my writing these days is happening over at Why is this interesting?, a daily email full of interesting stuff. This site has been around since 2004. Feel free to get in touch. Good places to get started are my Framework of the Day posts or my favorite books and podcasts. Get in touch.

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Backronym

In doing a bit of research for Holy Crap! Facts about whether or not the word “tip” was actually an acronym for “to insure promptness” (it is not), I ran across the word backronym. The word is defined on Wikipedia as “a phrase that is constructed ‘after the fact’ from a previously existing word or abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym.” I thought that was pretty cool. Wikipedia also has a short list of backronyms.

May 6, 2008