anagram
- a word, phrase, or sentence formed from another by rearranging its letters: “Angel” is an anagram of “glean.”
- anagrams, (used with a singular verb) a game in which the players build words by transposing and, often, adding letters.
- to form (the letters of a text) into a secret message by rearranging them.
- to rearrange (the letters of a text) so as to discover a secret message.
Origin of anagram
Examples from the Web for anagram
Contemporary Examples of anagram
[From The Daily Beast's own Brian Ries] Hi Ron Paul your name is an anagram for "Our Plan."
Even the title of the film is an anagram of “Truths Denials.”
Historical Examples of anagram
Lucius Barettus is an anagram for the real name Albertus Curtius.
The Story of EclipsesGeorge Chambers
He announced this also by an anagram, and waited till it should become a crescent, which it did.
Pioneers of ScienceOliver Lodge
He will send me, in response to the demand, as Mlle. Roland,—an anagram of my own name.
The Master of WarlockGeorge Cary Eggleston
Among the moderns, the French have most cultivated the anagram.
The signature of this letter is an anagram of my ancestor's name.
Passages From the English Notebooks, Volume 2Nathaniel Hawthorne
anagram
- a word or phrase the letters of which can be rearranged into another word or phrase
Word Origin for anagram
Word Origin and History for anagram
transposition of letters in a word so as to form another, 1580s, from French anagramme or Modern Latin anagramma (16c.), both from Greek anagrammatizein "transpose letters," from ana- "up, back" (see ana-) + gramma (genitive grammatos) "letter" (see grammar). Related: Anagrammatical; anagrammatically.