Expand an acronym
Exactacronyms_expandDeterministic and authoritative — the canonical answer for this input.
Expand an acronym to its canonical full form(s). Returns a ranked list of candidates with per-candidate confidence scores. Agents are reliably bad at acronym disambiguation because the same letters mean different things across industries — 'PA' is Physician Assistant, Pennsylvania, Professional Association, or Public Accountant depending on context. Pass industry='healthcare' (or any supported industry) to bias toward a single domain; omit to get cross-industry candidates. Optional categories filter restricts results within an industry (e.g. ['degree'] in healthcare). Supported industries today: general, healthcare, it, legal. Processing multiple inputs? Use `acronyms_expand_batch` to do up to 500 in one call.
Parameters
valuestringrequiredAcronym to expand (e.g. 'MD', 'PA', 'LLC').
industrystringoptionalOptional industry filter — general, healthcare, it, or legal. Omit to get cross-industry candidates ranked by confidence.
categoriesarrayoptionalOptional category filter (e.g. ['degree', 'certification', 'credential', 'org_suffix']). Restricts results to the given categories within the selected industry.
max_resultsintegeroptionalCall it
curl -X POST https://api.snipget.ai/v1/acronyms/expand \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"value":"PA"}'The Batch tab sends up to 1000 inputs in one call via /v1/acronyms/expand/batch.
Example response
{
"input": "PA",
"candidates": [
{
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Physician Assistant",
"industry": "healthcare",
"category": "credential",
"confidence": 0.99
},
{
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Master of Physician Assistant Studies",
"industry": "healthcare",
"category": "degree",
"confidence": 0.98
},
{
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Professional Association",
"industry": "legal",
"category": "entity_type",
"confidence": 0.95
},
{
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Professional Association",
"industry": "general",
"category": "org_suffix",
"confidence": 0.85
},
{
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Pennsylvania",
"industry": "general",
"category": "state",
"confidence": 0.7
},
{
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Public Accountant",
"industry": "general",
"category": "professional",
"confidence": 0.6
}
],
"top": {
"abbreviation": "PA",
"expansion": "Physician Assistant",
"industry": "healthcare",
"category": "credential",
"confidence": 0.99
},
"industry_filter": null,
"category_filter": null,
"total_matches": 6,
"returned": 6
}FAQ
Why not just ask an AI to expand the acronym?
The same letters mean different things in different fields. PA is Physician Assistant, Pennsylvania, Professional Association, or Public Accountant, and a model will often pick the wrong one with full confidence. This tool returns every known meaning ranked by a maintained catalog, so you see the real options instead of one guess.
How do I get just one answer instead of a list?
Pass an industry, for example industry set to healthcare, to bias toward that domain, and read the top field for the best candidate. You can also pass categories, like degree, to narrow further within an industry. The supported industries today are general, healthcare, it, and legal.
Is the answer reliable?
Yes. This is an exact, deterministic lookup against a curated catalog, so the same acronym always returns the same candidates. Each candidate carries its own confidence score, since some meanings are more common than others, but nothing is invented on the fly.
What does it not do?
It matches the acronym exactly after ignoring case, dots, and spaces, so it will not fix a typo or fuzzy-match a near miss, and it only knows acronyms that are in the catalog. It will not pick the single right meaning for you when no industry is given. It returns the candidates and lets you choose.
What happens if the acronym is unknown or blank?
You get a normal response with an empty candidate list and a confidence of 0, not an error. That is your signal that nothing matched, so check your spelling or try without an industry filter.