Why is DB an acronym and not abbreviation?

Question

According to the .NET framework design guidelines, they say DB is an acronym and cased as such. But I thought it was an abbreviation of database?

Answer 1

I would say abbreviation instead of acronym as database is one word. Interestingly DB is already very overused dictionary.

Answer 2

English is strange.

I think you'll find that 'data base' used to be two words, and slowly got merged over time, to one. The general process for merging words is

• Data Base
• Data-Base
• Database

In regards to the API, I think it's sometimes inconsistent anyway, so I wouldn't be too concerned with specific definitions. My preference is to always uppercase acronyms.

Answer 3

Database is a portmanteau of "data" and "base"; that makes "DB" to be an acronym because it is the first letter of each word involved (even if the words are written as a combined word).

An abbreviation is usually the first few letters of the word IE: "abbrev." is the abbreviated version of "abbreviation".

Answer 4

Originally it was "data base", then "data-base", and then just "database". You can see all three used in this paper and its citations. Reference 4 is to E.F. Codd's 1974 paper "Recent Investigations in Relational Data Base Systems", reference 2 is to Don Chamberlin's "Relational Data-Base Management Systems" (1976), while reference 1 is to a paper in the ACM Transactions on Database Systems.

You see this sort of progression in English as a new compound noun becomes familiar. Take a look at Google Books and type in "sky-scraper" to find century old references to the new type of building.

So actually DB is an acronym for the old "data base". (It's not a portmanteau, which is a blending of two or more words, eg, "smog" is a portmanteau of "smoke-and-fog".)

Answer 5

It is an abbreviaion AND an acronym! An acronym is simply an abbreviation where the first letter of every word is used. In this case "Data Base". Abbreviations are just shortened words, e.g. <- that...

Basically, there are several bases. There's the Code-base, Knowledgebase and of course the Database. The word has become so familiar that they're now written without hyphen or space in-between. A database is just a base with data.

According to the Wiki, the word "acronym" was created by Bell Laboratories in 1943. (Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning?) Some believe the word is an acronym itself!