recursive acronym 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" (though Cygnus people say this is a backronym). See
   also mung, EMACS.

	

	recursive acronym
     
         A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to
        choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to
        themselves or to other acronyms or 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 stands for "GNU's Not
        Unix!" - and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands
        to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support".
     
        See also mung.
     
        [Jargon File]
     
        (1995-04-28)