Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Anagram |
AnagramNoun1. A word or phrase spelled by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. Verb1. Read letters out of order to discover a hidden meaning. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "anagram" was first used: 1589. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
An anagram (Greek ana-, "back", and grafein, "to write") is the result of transposing the letters of a word or words in such a manner as to produce other words that possess meaning. The meaning of the new word so created is seen in the context of or in contrast to that of the old word so as to create humorous or interesting associations between the two. Anagrams are a type of constrained writing.The construction of anagrams is an amusement of great antiquity, its invention being ascribed without authority to the Jews, probably because the later Hebrew writers, particularly the Kabbalists, were fond of it, asserting that "secret mysteries are woven in the numbers of letters." Anagrams were known to the Greekss and also to the Romanss, although the known Latin examples of words of more than one syllable are nearly all imperfect.
They were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and later, particularly in France, where a certain Thomas Billon was appointed "anagrammatist to the king" by Louis XIII. W. Camden (Remains, 7th ed., 1674) defines "Anagrammatisme" as "a dissolution of a name truly written into his letters, as his elements, and a new connection of it by artificial transposition, without addition, subtraction or change of any letter, into different words, making some perfect sense applyable to the person named." Dryden disdainfully called the pastime the "torturing of one poor word ten thousand ways" but many men and women of note have found amusement in it.
A well-known anagram is the change of "Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum" into "Virgo serena, pia, munda et immaculata." Among others are the anagrammatic answer to Pilate's question, "Quid est veritas" -- namely, "Est vir qui adest"; and the transposition of "Horatio Nelson" into "Honor est a Nilo"; and of "Florence Nightingale" into "Flit on, cheering angel." James I's courtiers discovered in "James Stuart" "A just master," and converted "Charles James Stuart" into "Claimes Arthur's seat." "Eleanor Audeley," wife of Sir John Davies, is said to have been brought before the High Commission in 1634 for extravagances, stimulated by the discovery that her name could be transposed to "Reveale, O Daniel," and to have been laughed out of court by another anagram submitted by the dean of the Arches, "Dame Eleanor Davies," "Never soe mad a ladie."
There must be few names that could furnish so many anagrams as that of "Augustus de Morgan" who tells that a friend had constructed about 800 on his name, specimens of which are given in his Budget of Paradoxes P. 82.
The pseudonyms adopted by authors are often transposed forms, more or less exact, of their names; thus "Calvinus" becomes "Alcuinus"; "Francois Rabelais," "Alcofribas Nasier"; "Edward Gorey," "Ogdred Weary"; "Vladimir Nabokov", "Vivian Darkbloom" or "Vivian Bloodmark" or "Dorian Vivalcomb" (imperfect); "Bryan Waller Proctor," "Barry Cornwall, poet"; "Henry Rogers," "R. E. H. Greyson," and so on. It is to be noted that the last two are impure anagrams, an "r" being left out in both cases. "Telliamed," a simple reversal, is the title of a well known work by "De Maillet." One of the most remarkable pseudonyms of this class is the name "Voltaire", which the celebrated philosopher assumed instead of his family name, François Marie Arouet, and which is now generally allowed to be an anagram of "Arouet, l[e] j[eune]", that is, Arouet the younger.
Perhaps the only practical use to which anagrams have been turned is to be found in the transpositions in which some of the astronomers of the 17th century embodied their discoveries with the design apparently of avoiding the risk that, while they were engaged in further verification, the credit of what they had found out might be claimed by others. Thus Galileo announced his discovery that Venus had phasess like the Moon in the form, "Haec immatura a me jam feustra leguntur--oy," that is, "Cynthiae figuras aemulatur Mater Amorum."
There are also a few "natural" anagrams, English words unconsciously created by switching letters around. The French chaise longue (long chair) became the English "lounge" and it has been speculated that the English "curd" comes from the Latin crudus (raw).
Cryptic crossword puzzles frequently use anagrammatic clues, usually indicating that they are anagrams by the inclusion of a word like "confused" or "in disarray". An example would be Businessman bursts into tears (9 letters); the solution, Stationer is an anagram of into tears, the letters of which have burst out of their original arrangement to form the name of a type of businessman.
Sample anagrams
Also see the board game Anagrams
- evangelist = evil's agent
- Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky = A C.I.A. mink and wild, sloppy intern
- desperation = a rope ends it
- Alec Guinness = genuine class
- semolina = is no meal
- the public art galleries = large picture halls, I bet
- contradiction = accord not in it
- Tony Blair MP = I'm Tory plan B
- George Bush = He bugs Gore
- George Herbert Walker Bush = Huge berserk rebel warthog
- New American Century = Menace: Unwary cretin
- American Empire = Me, CIA: Repairmen
- dormitory = dirty room
- The Morse code = here come dots
- slot machines = cash lost in 'em
- animosity = is no amity
- mother-in-law = woman Hitler
- snooze alarms = Alas! No more Z's
- a decimal point = I'm a dot in place
- the earthquakes = that queer shake
- eleven plus two = twelve plus one
- "To be or not to be: that is the question, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." = "One of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies: our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."
- "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!" - Neil Armstrong = "A thin man ran; makes large stride, left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!"
- Virginia Bottomley = I'm an evil Tory bigot
- President Clinton of the USA = to copulate he finds interns
- Spiro Agnew = grow a spine (note that spine can be anagrammed into another body part)
- T. S. Eliot = toilets
- Soylent Green = stolen energy
- William Ewart Gladstone = Wild agitator, means well = Wilt tear down all images? (these two were found by Lewis Carroll)
- astronomers = moon-starers
- it's ridiculous = it is ludicrous
External Links
- Anagrams, Long and Short
- The Anagrammed Bible : Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, ISBN 0970214804
- Internet Anagram Server (= I, rearrangement servant)
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Anagram."
Synonyms: AnagramSynonyms: anagrammatise (v), anagrammatize (v). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Equivocalness | Noun: equivocalness; Adjective: double meaning; ambiguity, double entente, double entendre, pun, paragram, calembour, quibble, equivoque, anagram; conundrum; (riddle); play on words, word play; (wit); homonym, homonymy; amphiboly, amphibology; ambilogy, ambiloquy. |
Letter | Spelling, orthograph; phonography, phonetic spelling; anagrammatism, metagrammatism. cipher, monogram, anagram; doubleacrostic. |
Neologism | Pun, paranomasia, play upon words; word play; (wit); double-entendre; (ambiguity); palindrome, paragram, anagram, clinch; abuse of language, abuse of terms. |
Secret | Enigma, riddle, puzzle, nut to crack, conundrum, charade, rebus, logogriph; monogram, anagram; Sphinx; crux criticorum. |
Wit | Word-play, jeu de mots; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre; (ambiguity); quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum; (riddle); anagram, acrostic, double acrostic, trifling, idle conceit, turlupinade. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Anagram |
| English words defined with "anagram": anagrammatic, anagrammatical, antigram. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "anagram": Alcofribas ♦ Barry Cornwall ♦ cepstrum ♦ Holophernes ♦ I.H.S, International Organization for Standardization ♦ Rosalinde ♦ scary devil monastery. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Anagram" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Afrikaan (anagram), Czech (anagram), Dutch (anagram), German (anagram), Serbo-Croatian (anagram), Swedish (anagram). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Those words are a perfect anagram of 'predestination (Oliver's Travels; writing credit: Alan Plater) He is here in San Francisco, just as sure as you're sitting there. He's changed his name by making an anagram out of his original name (The Cheap Detective; writing credit: Neil Simon) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Anagram" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Anagram" is used about 36 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 36 | 57,479 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "anagram"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | anagram. (various references) | |
Albanian | anagramë. (various references) | |
Arabic | جناس تصحيفي, جناس تصحيحي, إعادة ترتيب الأحرف. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | анаграма. (various references) | |
Czech | anagram. (various references) | |
Dutch | anagram, letterkeer. (various references) | |
Esperanto | anagramo. (various references) | |
Farsi | مقلوب , قلب (Brassy, Counterfeit, Heart, Midst, Spurious), تحریف (Distortion, Garble, Sophistication). (various references) | |
French | anagramme. (various references) | |
German | Buchstabenrätsel. (various references) | |
Greek | ανάγραμμα. (various references) | |
Hungarian | anagramma. (various references) | |
Italian | anagramma. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | アドレス帳 (address book, addressing, adrenalin, advisor, anachronism, analog computer, analog digital, Anaphylaxie, anarchism, anarchist, anarchy, anathema, announce, announcement, announcer, unaccompanied baggage). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | アナグラム . (various references) | |
Manx | fockle meshtit. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | anagramay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | anagrama. (various references) | |
Romanian | anagramã. (various references) | |
Russian | анаграмма. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | anagram. (various references) | |
Spanish | anagrama. (various references) | |
Swedish | anagram. (various references) | |
Turkish | harflerin yerini değiştirme, evirmece, çevrik kelime. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | анаграма. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | anagrammatizein. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "anagram": anagrammatic, anagrammatical, anagrammatically, anagrammatization, anagrammatizations, anagrammatize, anagrammatized, anagrammatizes, anagrammatizing, anagrammed, anagramming, anagrams. (additional references) | |
| |
"Anagram" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: anagramm, aneagram, anergia, Angadriama, angara, angra, angram, anigram, anigree, annagram, anogram, Ayarga, Enneagram, Nagaraj, Nagarik, nanogram, negram, nigram, panagram, Sanagare, Sanatrem, Sangram. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "anagram" (pronounced a"nugra'm) |
| 6 | -n u g r a' m | monogram, sonogram. |
| 5 | -u g r a' m | milligram, Centigram, diagram, electrocardiogram, epigram, histogram, hologram, kilogram, logogram, telegram. |
| 4 | -g r a' m | microgram, program, programme, cablegram, engram, mammogram, reprogram. |
| 3 | -r a' m | diaphragm, Wolfram. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-a-g-m-n-r" | |
-1 letter: amarna, ragman. | |
-2 letters: agama, grama, grana. | |
-3 letters: agar, agma, anga, gama, gnar, gram, gran, maar, mana, raga, rang. | |
-4 letters: aga, ama, ana, arm, gam, gan, gar, mag, man, mar, nag, nam, rag, ram, ran. | |
-5 letters: aa, ag, am, an, ar, ma, na. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-a-g-m-n-r" | |
+1 letter: anagrams, armagnac. | |
+2 letters: armagnacs, garageman, gravamina. | |
+3 letters: anagrammed, garbageman, grammarian, managerial, mandragora, marginalia, mascaraing, paramagnet, parmigiana. | |
+4 letters: agrarianism, anagramming, grammarians, granulomata, madrigalian, mandragoras, paramagnets. | |
+5 letters: agrarianisms, anagrammatic, managerially, paramagnetic, permanganate. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
