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.
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