ABSTRACT
We have witnessed an explosion in the use of acronyms and abbreviated forms over the past few years and it would have been quite fastidious, and not very helpful, to give a comprehensive list of acronyms used in the French press. In this chapter, we have concentrated on acronyms that not only occur frequently but on those that have become lexicalized, i.e. used as words in their own right. Most of these acronyms are recognized on sight by any French person and the original words represented by the individual letters of the acronym have often been forgotten. Everyone knows what the CAC 40 is, few French people know what it stands for! It will be noticed that usage of capitalization is not always consistent.
