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recursive acronym


recursive acronym:: pl.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".  See also mung, EMACS.