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 anagrams
Contemporary Examples of anagrams
Upon opening The Warsaw Anagrams, I thought: why am I reading another Holocaust novel?
Historical Examples of anagrams
These anagrams, therefore, were either satirical or complimentary.
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3)Isaac D'Israeli
It is much like anagrams, this ordering of matter in an 109 essay.
English: Composition and LiteratureW. F. (William Franklin) Webster
The prefaces to this are signed with anagrams of George Starkey's name.
Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume IIHenry Vaughan
Then that must have been a masquerade, that other time—all that mumbo-jumbo with the Anagrams.
And Then the Town Took OffRichard Wilson
There is even a reference to a bibliographer of books of anagrams.
A History of Bibliographies of BibliographiesArcher Taylor
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 anagrams
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.