Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire
by greedo on Thursday May 12, 2016 @12:26PM
(#11684618)
Uh, what do you think "granatomyot" means?
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire
by eridius on Thursday May 12, 2016 @02:59PM
(#11685859)
What do you think the rest of it means? According to Wikipedia[1], the phrase "ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot" means "hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher".
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire
by greedo on Thursday May 12, 2016 @03:36PM
(#11686109)
There are hand-held grenade launchers, crew served grenade launchers, etc. None of which means it's a "backronym."
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire
by eridius on Thursday May 12, 2016 @04:47PM
(#11686657)
Sure it does. The acronym RPG literally comes from the phrase "ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot", which was the name given to a series of Russian weapons in the category of portable anti-tank rocket launchers. And this name definitely pre-dates "rocket-propelled grenade", and in fact predates the weapons being rocket-propelled at all. For example, the RPG-40 is simply an anti-tank hand grenade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-40), or the RPG-43 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-43) and RPG-6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-6).
Actually, looking at these sources, the non-propelled versions were actually called "ruchnaya protivotankovaya granata" ("hand-held anti-tank grenade"). Still the same acronym of course, it just doesn't include the launcher. So when the launcher part was added, the phrase changed slightly but the acronym remained the same. And it was only at this point that the phrase "rocket-propelled grenade" could be used to refer to this weapon, and the phrase was presumably created to match the acronym RPG.
'rocket propelled grenade' is a backronym.