AKA

1. 1
   prepositioninitialism

   Initialism of also known as.

   Detectives identified the suspect, AKA "the Fox," after months of surveillance.

   The singer Stefani Germanotta, AKA Lady Gaga, headlined the festival.

   Note

   Before a nickname, alias or stage name, it stands in for the full phrase it shortens: one name, then AKA, then the other, usually set off by commas, as in Frank, AKA "the lady killer." As an initialism it is spoken letter by letter, A-K-A, never as a single word. The second name is often a nickname in quotation marks, which is where the form feels most at home.

2. 2
   adverbcolloquial

   Used to introduce a restatement or clarification of what was just said; in other words.

   She's training for a marathon, AKA running twenty miles a week.

   The project lead, AKA the person who actually makes the decisions, was out sick.

   Similarnamely

   Note

   Here the label stretches from names to meanings. What follows is not another name but a gloss on what came before, as in golfers who exceed 40 seconds – AKA "bad time." It is a loosening of the alias use, and it can even introduce an instruction, as in Beth Gillette's 2024 aside "(aka take notes)." In this role it is often written lowercase and set between dashes or parentheses rather than commas.

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