A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose
acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to
other acronyms/abbreviations. The original of the breed may have been
TINT ("TINT Is Not TECO"). 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" (though Cygnus people say this
is a {backronym}). The GNU recursive acronym may have been patterned
on XINU, "XINU Is Not Unix" -- a particularly nice example because it
is a mirror image, a backronym, and a recursive acronym. See also
{mung}, {EMACS}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {backronym}{EMACS}{GNU}{mung}]