In a message dated 20/12/2010 17:29:18 GMT Standard Time, albertson.chris@gmail.com writes: The Oxford dictionary has "radar", "loran" and "scuba" all listed in lower case. Also according to them "radar" never was an acronym. It is a coined word. Technically to be an acronym the it must be spelled by the first letter of several other words. "SCUBA" is an acronym but "scuba" is now a common English word that has displaced the old 1950's vintage "SCUBA" in modern usage. But "radar" was never an acronym. The Oxford English Dictionary takes the view that the English language changes with time. You can disagree. Many people do and claim English has fixed rules that never change but if you do then you will have to pick a date for when it was "correct" and then explain how it could be incorrect before that date. -------- S'funny, I was always under the impression, from many years back, that it WAS an acronym, "radio detection and ranging" comes to mind. The following Wikipedia comments would seem to confirm that, although they also suggest it's lost its capitalisation somewhere along the way, much as you comment for SCUBA, so I guess it might even be considered optional:-) ----------------- The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the _U.S. Navy_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Navy) as an _acronym_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_and_initialism) for radio detection and ranging._[1]_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar#cite_note-0) _[2]_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar#cite_note-1) The term radar has since entered the English and other languages as the common noun, radar, losing all of the capitalization. In the _United Kingdom_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) , this technology was initially called RDF (range and direction finding), using the same acronym as the one for _radio direction finding_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_direction_finding) to conceal its ranging capability. ------------------ Most modern languages change with time, nothing new there, but it's perhaps never a good idea to be too pedantic, especially when quoting another's opinion:-) regards Nigel GM8PZR