anagram
Americannoun
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a word, phrase, or sentence formed from another by rearranging its letters.
“Angel” is an anagram of “glean.”
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(used with a singular verb) anagrams, a game in which the players build words by transposing and, often, adding letters.
verb (used with object)
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to form (the letters of a text) into a secret message by rearranging them.
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to rearrange (the letters of a text) so as to discover a secret message.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of anagram
First recorded in 1580–90; probably from Middle French anagramme, from New Latin anagramma; equivalent to ana- + -gram 1
Explanation
An anagram is a word or phrase that's formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. For example, the letters that make up “A decimal point” can be turned into the anagram “I’m a dot in place.” People mainly make anagrams just for fun, but sometimes they’re used as pseudonyms or codes. For example, the French writer Francois Rabelais published his controversial first book under Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of his name. The most entertaining anagrams are the ones where the rearranged letters make some sort of comment on the original. “Dormitory” turns into the anagram “dirty room,” and “snooze alarms” can be rearranged into “Alas! No more Zs.”
Vocabulary lists containing anagram
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Rollins similarly championed Black pride on "Airegin," another of his best-known pieces which is rigorously quick-paced -- and whose title is an anagram for Nigeria.
From Barron's ● May 26, 2026
The suit claims that Energy Transfer’s litigation violated Greenpeace International’s rights under the European Union’s 2024 anti-Slapp law, an anagram for strategic litigation against public participation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
The name turned out to be an anagram of Mr. Navarro’s surname and he described it as a “Hitchcockian writing device” that became an inside joke with himself.
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2024
She’s everywhere, all the time, and her name happens to be an anagram of the word raven.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2023
He gave himself a splinter rearranging p-o-t-s into s-t-o-p—the first anagram he remembered making.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
These are wild anagrams for a stain on satin, giving material heft to ephemeral language.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2024
The theme-and-variations format is enchanting, allowing Sondheim, the great puzzler, to treat songs almost as anagrams.
From New York Times ● Oct. 22, 2023
They found that subjects awakened from REM sleep solved 32% more anagrams than subjects who were interrupted during non-REM sleep.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 27, 2023
Sometimes they made true anagrams, rearranging all the letters without repeating any; those entries are marked below.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2021
With more than enough time to kill, I started in again—rearranging them, trying to create anagrams, substituting different letters for others.
From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken
Although Hanbury initially wanted each name to appear in a coherent anagrammed form first, he gave that up since they were onscreen too briefly to be read that way.
From Salon ● Nov. 14, 2022
Although E.H.O'R. can be anagrammed as HERO, the character is doubtful of its gender.
From Time Magazine Archive
To pass the time, he anagrammed her sprawling name: Katherine Mutsensberger.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
He anagrammed “yrs forever” until he found one he liked: sorry fever.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
Some of these anagrammed his name, Benlowes, into Benevolus; to verify which, he spent his whole estate upon them.—P.
From The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 by Gilfillan, George
“It is intellectual,” Kagan said of the game, “it is mathematic, it is logic, it is strategy, it is word knowledge, it is anagramming and it’s luck.”
From Washington Post ● Aug. 1, 2022
CEILIDHS, the plural of a word meaning an Irish or Scottish party, isn’t exactly common, but it’s still a bit surprising Mackay missed it, given the best players’ extensive word knowledge and fast-twitch anagramming skills.
From Slate ● May 23, 2016
“We’ve done it as a labor of love,” César del Solar, who developed the anagramming website Aerolith, told me.
From Slate ● Sep. 30, 2014
He'd never before told a Katherine about his anagramming.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
He would stay special, use his talent to do something more interesting and important than anagramming and translating Latin.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
