From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishabbreviationab‧bre‧vi‧a‧tion /əˌbriːviˈeɪʃən/ ●●○ noun 1 [countable]SLGSHORT/NOT LONG a short form of a word or expressionabbreviation of/for ‘Dr’ is the written abbreviation of ‘Doctor’.RegisterIn everyday English, people usually say be short for instead of be the abbreviation of/for: W.H.O. is short for ‘World Health Organization’.2 [uncountable]SHORT/NOT LONG the act of abbreviating something
Examples from the Corpus
abbreviation• BBC is an abbreviation for British Broadcasting Corporation.• a Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations• It's a subject whose passion for diagrams and abbreviations and formulae can give nuclear physics a run for its money.• The three-letter abbreviations for the 659 amino acids encoded in the open reading frame beginning at nucleotide position 133 are also shown.• The increasingly specialized worlds of business, medicine, politics and technology are fueling the explosion of abbreviations.• Gordon has invented his own auxiliary language of abbreviation.• It is very well annotated, easily navigable and there is an admirable list of abbreviations.• You also need to understand some abbreviations, starting with the name of the firm, which is listed alphabetically.• Disk Operating Systems are usually known by the abbreviation DOS.• I never knew the abbreviation 'GI' stood for 'Government Issue'.• These must be written legibly and without abbreviation, so that the student can make maximum use of them.abbreviation of/for• Caps an abbreviation for capital letters.• Face an abbreviation for typeface referring to a family in a given style.• It is usual to design a logo around the organisation's name or an abbreviation of it.• The three-letter abbreviations for the 659 amino acids encoded in the open reading frame beginning at nucleotide position 133 are also shown.• Perhaps such abbreviations of thought are inevitable in the limited space available for text on a display label.• MIT is the abbreviation for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.• The abbreviation for computer display is surely wrong.• The abbreviation of would indicate that the stock is a preferred stock.• Door after door, each bearing an unintelligible abbreviation for what each room behind it contained. 