to rev from to revolve, to tab from to tabulate etc. But mostly abbreviated forms of verbs are formed by means of conversion from abbreviated nouns, eg to taxi, to vac etc. Adjectives can be abbreviated but they are mostly used in school slang and are combined with suffixation, eg comfy, dilly, mizzy etc.Here we can mention a group of words ending in o raquo ;, such as disco (dicotheque), expo (exposition), intro (introduction) and many others. On the analogy with these words there developed in Modern English a number of words where o is added as a kind of a suffix to the shortened form of the word, eg combo (combination) - невеликий естрадний ансамбль, Afro (African) -пріческа під африканця etc. In other cases the beginning of the word is clipped. In such cases we have apheresis e.g. chute (parachute), varsity (university), copter (helicopter), thuse (enthuse) etc. Sometimes the middle of the word is clipped, e.g. mart (market), fanzine (fan magazine) maths (mathematics). Such abbreviations are called syncope. Sometimes we have a combination of apocope with apheresis, when the beginning and the end of the word are clipped, eg tec (detective), van (avanguard) .Sometimes shortening influences the spelling of the word, eg c can be substituted by k before e to preserve pronunciation, e.g. mike (microphone), Coke (coca-cola) etc. The same rule is observed in the following cases: fax (facsimile), teck (technical college), trank (tranquilizer) etc. The final consonants in the shortened forms are substituded by letters characteristic of native English words. [7] This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.An abbreviation is a short way of writing a word or a phrase that could also be written out in full. So, for example, you might write Dr Kinsey instead of Doctor Kinsey. Here Dr is an abbreviation for the word Doctor. Abbreviations must be clearly distinguished from contractions. The key difference is that an abbreviation does not normally have a distinctive pronunciation of its own. So, for example, the abbreviation Dr is pronounced just like Doctor, the abbreviation oz is pronounced just like ounce (s) and the abbreviation eg is pronounced just like for example. (True, there are a few people who actually say ee-jee for the last one, but this practice is decidedly unusual.) A contraction, in contrast, does have its own distinctive pronunciation: for example, the contraction can t is pronounced differently from can not, and the contraction she s is pronounced differently from she is or she has. Abbreviations are very rarely used in formal writing. Almost the only ones which are frequently used are the abbreviations for certain common titles, when these are used with someone s name: Mr Willis, Dr Livingstone, Mrs Thatcher, Ms Harmon, St Joan. (Note that the two items Mrs and Ms are conventionally treated as abbreviations, even though they can be written in no other way.) When writing about a French or Spanish person, you may use the abbreviations for the French and Spanish equivalents of the English titles: M. Mitterrand, Sr. Gonz? Lez. (These are the usual French and Spanish abbreviations for Monsieur and Se? Or, equivalent to English Mister.) Observe that each of these abbreviations begins with a capital letter. Other titles are sometimes abbreviated in the same way: Prof. Chomsky, Sgt. Yorke, Mgr. Lindemann. However, it is usually much better to write these titles out in full when you are using them in a sentence: Professor Chomsky, Sergeant Yorke, Monsignor Lindemann. The abbreviated forms are best confined to places like footnotes and captions of pictures. Note carefully the use of full stops in these abbreviations. British usage favours omitting the full stop in abbreviations which include the first and last letters of a single word, such as Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr and St; American usage prefers (A) Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. and St., with full stops. Most other abbreviated titles, however, require a full stop, as shown above. A person s initials are a kind of abbreviation, and these are usually followed by full stops: John D. Rockefeller, C. Aubrey Smith, OJ Simpson. Increasingly, however, there is a tendency to write such initials without full stops: John D Rockefeller, C Aubrey Smith, OJ Simpson. And note the rare special case illustrated by Harry S Truman: the S in this name never takes a full stop, because it s not an abbreviation for anything; President Truman s parents actually gave him the middle name S. Two other common abbreviations are am (`before noon ) and pm (` after noon ): 10.00 am, six pm These are always acceptable. Note that these are not capitalized in British usage (though American usage prefers (A) 10.00 am and six pm, with small capitals and no full stops). Also usual are the abbreviations b.c. and ad, usually written in small capitals, for marki...
