The word “acronym” itself entered English only in 1940, and acronyms, especially the kind that are pronounced as a single word rather than a series of letters, began flourishing during World War II, when soldiers used acronyms like AWOL, snafu, WAAF, and radar. After the war, acronyms just kept proliferating, especially for organizations, new discoveries, and other names: laser, NASA, NATO, AIDS, NAACP, codec, Eniac, UNESCO, UNICEF, OPEC, FIFA, NASDAQ, FDR, CD-ROM, MoMA, DNA, and so on.