recursive acronym
pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition
is to choose acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to
themselves or to other acronyms/abbreviations. The classic
examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS")
and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a
Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and
GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not UNIX!" --- and a
company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU
Support". See also
mung,
EMACS.
