Abstract
The primary aim of this research is to study abbreviation as a word-formation process and identify its specificity. To achieve this aim, the following objectives were formulated and addressed: identification of the main methods of word formation in contemporary English; determination of the place of abbreviation in the word-formation system of modern English; identification of the main types of abbreviations; description of the characteristics of each kind; analysis of the structural and semantic organization of initialisms in contemporary English. The research was based on a complete Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2023) sampling method and involved the analysis of 635 initial abbreviations that were categorized according to their structural and semantic characteristics.