Difference Between Academy Award and Oscar

Academy Award vs Oscar

There are two very prestigious acting award- giving bodies or ceremonies in the world of entertainment. They are the Golden Globes and the other is called the Oscar. There is a very clear distinction between the two. The problem is that some people name another third award which they call the Academy Award. In reality, the Academy Award is the same as the Oscar. The latter is just the more popular and the more frequently used term than Academy Award to refer to one and the same award.

The history of the Oscar is very rich. It started in 1927 courtesy of the AMPAS, known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. With this long running track record of fame and glamour, it is dubbed as the more prestigious award than the Golden Globes. Awards are given to entertainers, directors, staff, crews, actors and actresses alike in 24 different categories solely for motion picture or film -related work. The nomination and voting processes are very tedious to complete because there are more than 6,000 individual members from the AMPAS who evaluate the nominees in the different slated categories. Since 1992, the Oscars has been staged at the Hollywood Kodak Theatre.

There are really lots of talk and arguments about how the name Oscar came to be. Bette Davis, the first female president of AMPAS, said that she coined the term Oscar from the name of her first husband ‘“ Harmon Oscar Nelson. Others also say that it was one of AMPAS’s first executive secretaries Margaret Herrick who named the Academy Awards as Oscar after Oscar Pierce who is her cousin in real life. Aside from these theories there are still lots of untold and unconfirmed stories about the root of the Oscar name.

Nevertheless, the Academy Awards or the Oscars are truly high awards fit for those who have excelled in the professional field of film industry. Although they are two names that refer to one and the same award, there are still some minor differences such as these.

1. Academy Award is the more formal and the original term given to the award compared to the Oscar, which is the more commonly used, the more popular and the newer term coined for the same award.
2. Oscar can also refer to the names of real persons from whom the popular alternative nickname to the Academy Award was derived.

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