"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 12/12/17 (ackronym, backronym, tip)

I'm going to talk about acromyms today. It comes from Greek akron, meaning summit, because you take the tip for each lettet for an acronym and make a word out of it. It is related to an acropolis, which is city built on a hill, acne, acrobit, actobat as well - performing high up. And there is such a thing as a backronym. Because acronyms essentially are taking the first letter ag a number of words, as I say, and making up a plausible word out of them, backronyms are when people take a word and think, "Oh, that must be an acronym" and they make up a story to fit that particular word. Many, many stories suggesting that "tip" is an acronym for "To Insure Promptness", and the idea is that in the 18th-century London, coffeehouses, when these coffeehouses were all the rage,  customers would drop coins into a box when they came in, and the box would be labelled "To Insure Promptness". Lovely story, but sadly no evidence at all exists for that. In fact, it all began with the criminal underworld, like so many words in English, in the 17th century - so rogues' cant as we called it - and tipping someone the wink, which we still use today. It means to give somebody a heads-up.  Tip is probably the root of giving a piece of advice, giving a tip to somebody. And tip then simply meant to allow or to give. And that sense of giving then translated over to tipping someone a shilling, giving someone a shilling as a result of good service, or to reward them in some way. And that is how we ended up with the modern meaning of giving someone a tip at the end, perhaps, of a good meal.