DVD
- 1Initialism of digital video/versatile disc.
The bonus features on this DVD include deleted scenes and a director's commentary.
Streaming services have largely replaced the DVDs that once filled rental stores.
Note
An abbreviation whose letters outrun any single expansion: digital video disc and digital versatile disc both stand behind it, so the short form is the safe one to write. It counts like any object (one DVD, two DVDs, with no apostrophe in the plural), and a particular film is a DVD of its title, as in "our DVD of Casino" from a 2024 piece by J. Oliver Conroy.
- 2Initialism of dissociated vertical deviation.
The ophthalmologist diagnosed DVD after watching one eye drift upward whenever the child grew tired.
Surgeons often treat DVD by weakening the muscle that pulls the eye upward.
Note
Strabismus specialists use it the way names of conditions are usually used, without an article. A patient has DVD or is treated for DVD, never a DVD, and that keeps it apart from the video disc. Its known pitfall is confusion with inferior oblique overaction (IOOA). Rosenbaum and Santiago's Clinical Strabismus Management (1999) warns that DVD misdiagnosed as IOOA may be operated on as if it were the other condition.
Practice
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