Here's the quote from the introduction. By the way, my edition of Vine's is from 1952, long before NIV.

'Words are not static things. They change meanings with passage of time. Many words used in the KJV no longer possess in current English the meanings they ha in 1611. We do not now use "prevent" in the sense of "precede," or "carriage" in the sense of "baggage." These changes of meaning may be infereed from the content, but there are other changes which might not be so readily noticed. An important example is the word "atonement," one of the great technical terms of theology. When this word retained its etymological sense of "at-one-ment," it was an appropriate rendering for Gk. katallage, and is so used in the KJV of Rom. 5:11. But "atonement" has long ceased to be an English equivilent of "reconcilication," and its continued use leads to confusion of thought on a theme of utmost importance. A study of the articles on PROPITIATE, RANSOM, and RECONCILE in this work will greatly clarify the reader's understanding of the biblical resentation of what is commonly called "the doctrine of the atonement."'

End quote. (I could use the quote tags, but I hate the way they mess up formatting, i.e. no line breaks.) It seems that Mr. Vine sees the word "atonement" as making an etymological shift from "reconciliation" to more at "propitiation" in the English language. Perhaps the translators of the NIV saw "propitiation" and "sacrifice of atonement" as being complete synonyms...? Seems plausable.

By the way, I'm not defending the dynamic equivilent method of translation at all. I'm just saying that in this case it could be an example of genuine etymological assumption.

(Latin phrase goes here.)