From today's newspaper:

Call it the ultimate Nimby law for railroads. The City Council of Washington, D.C., recently passed a not-in-my-back-yard regulation that ... would ban trains carrying hazardous chimicals from passing through the nation's capital.
. . . .Feel safer? Think again. While Washington's law might give residents a sense of security, it would do so at the expense of surrounding areas.

This may be the first time I've seen nimby written as a word, rather than all-caps as an acronym (NIMBY).

Is the term familar on the other side of the pond?

Yes, it's quite commonly used over here. Since we don't use "back yard" much (we'd use "garden"), it obviously originated on your side.

I've seen it written as both "NIMBY" and "nimby", but it is several years since I've read a piece where the author felt it necessary to spell out the acronym.

I've never heard the term NIMBY. I like it, though!

Shu, I think it has been written here as nimby. However, when I looked it up in Onelook, most of the entries were in caps. I found this from word origins: "...for not in my back yard, 1980, Amer.Eng., supposedly coined by Walter Rodgers of the American Nuclear Society." I had thought it around longer than that!

I've always seen it in caps, and would guess the term to be 25 to 30 years old. Anyone who's hung around city planning people will have heard the term.

Once The Times has accepted an acronym as a word in its own right, then its style guidance to its writers will be to write it as a word.

The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) is one organisation whose title has now been accepted as a word and The Times now writes it as Abta.

The latest Times Style and Usage Guide shows Nimby (with an initial capital).

It certainly appears in my dictionary as a recognised word although it's not one I'd use for the same reason Arnie pointed out.

The Word Detective has an article here.

quote:

According to the Oxford Dictionary of New Words, "nimby" was coined in about 1980 by the head of the American Nuclear Society, a "pro-nuclear" group.