>>> "SM" == Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> table?". That can't be both two words separated by a space and a
>> single word at the same time, ie using
>> 
>> "\\(\\w+ \\w+\\)\\|\\(w+\\)

> Note that these regexps will be matched via `re-search-backward` so
> \\(w+\\) will typically only match a single character (it stops at the
> *rightmost* match).

> Another way to go about it is to construct the regexp from the set of
> abbrevs using `regexp-opt`.


Robert's solution works, the only downside is that I need and additional 

    (setq local-abbrev-table (list my-abbrev-table fundamental-mode-abbrev-table))

In each buffer which is a bit cumbersome. 

Are you saying this could be avoided using regexp-opt? If so how?