Основы теории английского языка. Листунова Е.И. - 22 стр.

little used elsewhere. A more recent formation is Prom, or the Proms,
for the Promenade Concerts now so popular in London.
       All these relatively late forms are recognized as abbreviations,
even if the full-stop is omitted, as indeed it was — deliberately — in
some of the examples in the preceding paragraph, but some are not so
obvious, and are rarely recognized as shortenings; for example, sport
(for disport), cab (for cabriolet), consols (for Consolidated Annu-
ities), chap (colloquially, from chapman), hack (for hackney), taxi
(for taxi-cab < taximeter-cabriolet, a cab with a meter to register the
‘tax’, or fare, as distinct from a bus or tram, where one takes a ticket
in advance), wig (for periwig), and even the recent fan, all that now
remains of fanatic. Perhaps very few people now use bicycle rather
than cycle as a verb, though it is equally common as a noun, and
certainly cycling is almost unchallenged...
       Abbreviations may vary with classes, groups, or occupations,
certain ones being peculiar to and rarely heard outside their own
groups. The sportsman has pro., ref., rugger, soccer; the young lady has
her hair perm, or ‘has a perm’, her mother vacs the carpet — I believe
the American housewife even percs her coffee — film stars are mobbed
by their-fans, and our young men are demobbed from the Services.
Doctors and scientists have their own abbreviations, as does the schoolboy
with his hols., matric., prep., school certif., and trig., and the universi-
ty student with his vac., and in the entertainment world the theatre
provides rep., and radio has given us mike and racing has tote, a much
more convenient and pronounceable form than totalizator. These will
probably remain class-types, and are hardly to be considered as stan-
dard English, though certain forms, e. g. rugger and soccer, are wide-
spread and may eventually find a place in the language; both are emi-
nently suitable for adoption, and if soccer were to be adopted as a far
more convenient form than Association Football — a term which is
rarely heard now except as the introduction to a B.B.C. sports commen-
tary — rugger would soon follow as a related analogous terms...
                                         J.A. Sheard. The Words We Use.
      IIb.
      The following pairs are the original word and acli pping.Using a
dictionary explain their meanings.
      Acute — cute, alone — lone, amend — mend, assize — size, attend
— tend, defence — fence, defender — fender, example — sample.

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