Acrophonic

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To explain the adjective acrophonic, consider a collection of ideograms such as the heiroglyphs of ancient Egypt. These icons have both a visual symbol and a verbal pronunciation. Many ideograms will have the same initial sound, for example, "k". Choose one representative ideogram from this subset of icons starting with k. Now, repeat this, choosing one representative ideogram starting with a particular sound for each sound in the language.

These choices together form an alphabet. Such an alphabet is said to be formed acrophonically. Since the initial sound of a word is selected out to stand for the whole, and the results of this process are concatenated to form a new word, the term acrophonic is similar in derivation to acronym.

Rudyard Kipling gives a fictional description of the process in one of his Just So Stories, "How the Alphabet was Made."

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