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Anagram

An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once.[1] For example, the word anagram itself can be rearranged into nag a ram; which is an Easter egg in Google when searching for the word "anagram".[2]

Animation for the anagram "Listen = Silent"

The original word or phrase is known as the subject of the anagram. Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram. Someone who creates anagrams may be called an "anagrammatist",[3] and the goal of a serious or skilled anagrammatist is to produce anagrams that reflect or comment on their subject.

Examples edit

 
An animation for the anagram "President Obama = a baptism redone"

Anagrams may be created as a commentary on the subject. They may be a parody, a criticism or satire. For example:

An anagram may also be a synonym of the original word. For example:

  • "evil" = "vile"
  • "a gentleman" = "elegant man"
  • "silent" = "listen"

An anagram that has a meaning opposed to that of the original word or phrase is called an "antigram".[4] For example:

  • "restful" = "fluster"
  • "cheater" = "teacher"
  • "funeral" = "real fun"
  • "adultery" = "true lady"
  • "forty five" = "over fifty"
  • "Santa" = "Satan"

They can sometimes change from a proper noun or personal name into an appropriate sentence:

They can change part of speech, such as the adjective "silent" to the verb "listen".

"Anagrams" itself can be anagrammatized as "Ars magna" (Latin, 'the great art').[5]

History edit

Anagrams can be traced back to the time of the ancient Greeks, and were used to find the hidden and mystical meaning in names.[6] They were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, for example with the poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut.[7] They are said to date back at least to the Greek poet Lycophron, in the third century BCE; but this relies on an account of Lycophron given by John Tzetzes in the 12th century.[8]

In the Talmudic and Midrashic literature, anagrams were used to interpret the Hebrew Bible, notably by Eleazar of Modi'im. Later, Kabbalists took this up with enthusiasm, calling anagrams temurah.[9]

Anagrams in Latin were considered witty over many centuries. Est vir qui adest, explained below, was cited as the example in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language. They became hugely popular in the early modern period, especially in Germany.[10]

Any historical material on anagrams must always be interpreted in terms of the assumptions and spellings that were current for the language in question. In particular, spelling in English only slowly became fixed. There were attempts to regulate anagram formation, an important one in English being that of George Puttenham's Of the Anagram or Posy Transposed in The Art of English Poesie (1589).

Influence of Latin edit

As a literary game when Latin was the common property of the literate, Latin anagrams were prominent.[11] Two examples are the change of Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum (Latin: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord [is] with you) into Virgo serena, pia, munda et immaculata (Latin: Serene virgin, pious, clean and spotless), and the anagrammatic answer to Pilate's question, Quid est veritas? (Latin: What is truth?), namely, Est vir qui adest (Latin: It is the man who is here). The origins of these are not documented.

Latin continued to influence letter values (such as I = J, U = V and W = VV). There was an ongoing tradition of allowing anagrams to be "perfect" if the letters were all used once, but allowing for these interchanges. This can be seen in a popular Latin anagram against the Jesuits: Societas Jesu turned into Vitiosa seces (Latin: Cut off the wicked things). Puttenham, in the time of Elizabeth I, wished to start from Elissabet Anglorum Regina (Latin: Elizabeth Queen of the English), to obtain Multa regnabis ense gloria (Latin: By thy sword shalt thou reign in great renown); he explains carefully that H is "a note of aspiration only and no letter", and that Z in Greek or Hebrew is a mere SS. The rules were not completely fixed in the 17th century. William Camden in his Remains commented, singling out some letters—Æ, K, W, and Z—not found in the classical Roman alphabet:[12]

The precise in this practice strictly observing all the parts of the definition, are only bold with H either in omitting or retaining it, for that it cannot challenge the right of a letter. But the Licentiats somewhat licentiously, lest they should prejudice poetical liberty, will pardon themselves for doubling or rejecting a letter, if the sence fall aptly, and "think it no injury to use E for Æ; V for W; S for Z, and C for K, and contrariwise.

— William Camden, Remains

Early modern period edit

When it comes to the 17th century and anagrams in English or other languages, there is a great deal of documented evidence of learned interest. The lawyer Thomas Egerton was praised through the anagram gestat honorem ('he carries honor'); the physician George Ent took the anagrammatic motto genio surget ('he rises through spirit/genius'), which requires his first name as Georgius.[13] James I's courtiers discovered in "James Stuart" "a just master", and converted "Charles James Stuart" into "Claims Arthur's seat" (even at that point in time, the letters I and J were more-or-less interchangeable). Walter Quin, tutor to the future Charles I, worked hard on multilingual anagrams on the name of father James.[14] A notorious murder scandal, the Overbury case, threw up two imperfect anagrams that were aided by typically loose spelling and were recorded by Simonds D'Ewes: "Francis Howard" (for Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset, her maiden name spelled in a variant) became "Car findes a whore", with the letters E hardly counted, and the victim Thomas Overbury, as "Thomas Overburie", was written as "O! O! a busie murther" (an old form of "murder"), with a V counted as U.[15][16]

William Drummond of Hawthornden, in an essay On the Character of a Perfect Anagram, tried to lay down rules for permissible substitutions (such as S standing for Z) and letter omissions.[17] William Camden[18] provided a definition of "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 appliable (i.e., applicable) to the person named." Dryden in MacFlecknoe disdainfully called the pastime the "torturing of one poor word ten thousand ways".[19]

"Eleanor Audeley", wife of Sir John Davies, is said to have been brought before the High Commission[clarification needed] 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 Sir John Lambe, the dean of the Arches, "Dame Eleanor Davies", "Never soe mad a ladie".[20][21]

An example from France was a flattering anagram for Cardinal Richelieu, comparing him to Hercules or at least one of his hands (Hercules being a kingly symbol), where Armand de Richelieu became Ardue main d'Hercule ("difficult hand of Hercules").[22]

Modern period edit

Examples from the 19th century are the transposition of "Horatio Nelson" into Honor est a Nilo (Latin: Honor is from the Nile); and of "Florence Nightingale" into "Flit on, cheering angel".[23] The Victorian love of anagramming as recreation is alluded to by the mathematician Augustus De Morgan[24] using his own name as an example; "Great Gun, do us a sum!" is attributed to his son William De Morgan, but a family friend John Thomas Graves was prolific, and a manuscript with over 2,800 has been preserved.[25][26][27]

With the advent of surrealism as a poetic movement, anagrams regained the artistic respect they had had in the Baroque period. The German poet Unica Zürn, who made extensive use of anagram techniques, came to regard obsession with anagrams as a "dangerous fever", because it created isolation of the author.[28] The surrealist leader André Breton coined the anagram Avida Dollars for Salvador Dalí, to tarnish his reputation by the implication of commercialism.

Applications edit

While anagramming is certainly a recreation first, there are ways in which anagrams are put to use, and these can be more serious, or at least not quite frivolous and formless. For example, psychologists use anagram-oriented tests, often called "anagram solution tasks", to assess the implicit memory of young adults and adults alike.[29]

Establishment of priority edit

Natural philosophers (astronomers and others) of the 17th century transposed their discoveries into Latin anagrams, to establish their priority. In this way they laid claim to new discoveries before their results were ready for publication.

Galileo used smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras for Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi (Latin: I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form) for discovering the rings of Saturn in 1610.[30][31] Galileo announced his discovery that Venus had phases like the Moon in the form Haec immatura a me iam frustra leguntur oy (Latin: These immature ones have already been read in vain by me -oy), that is, when rearranged, Cynthiae figuras aemulatur Mater Amorum (Latin: The Mother of Loves [= Venus] imitates the figures of Cynthia [= the moon]). In both cases, Johannes Kepler had solved the anagrams incorrectly, assuming they were talking about the Moons of Mars (Salve, umbistineum geminatum Martia proles) and a red spot on Jupiter (Macula rufa in Jove est gyratur mathem), respectively.[32] By coincidence, he turned out to be right about the actual objects existing.

In 1656, Christiaan Huygens, using a better telescope than those available to Galileo, figured that Galileo's earlier observations of Saturn actually meant it had a ring (Galileo's tools were only sufficient to see it as bumps) and, like Galileo, had published an anagram, aaaaaacccccdeeeeeghiiiiiiillllmmnnnnnnnnnooooppqrrstttttuuuuu. Upon confirming his observations, three years later he revealed it to mean Annulo cingitur, tenui, plano, nusquam coherente, ad eclipticam inclinato (Latin: It [Saturn] is surrounded by a thin, flat, ring, nowhere touching, inclined to the ecliptic).[33]

When Robert Hooke discovered Hooke's law in 1660, he first published it in anagram form, ceiiinosssttuv, for ut tensio, sic vis (Latin: as the extension, so the force).[34]

Pseudonyms edit

Anagrams are connected to pseudonyms, by the fact that they may conceal or reveal, or operate somewhere in between like a mask that can establish identity. For example, Jim Morrison used an anagram of his name in the Doors song "L.A. Woman", calling himself "Mr. Mojo Risin'".[35] The use of anagrams and fabricated personal names may be to circumvent restrictions on the use of real names, as happened in the 18th century when Edward Cave wanted to get around restrictions imposed on the reporting of the House of Commons.[36] In a genre such as farce or parody, anagrams as names may be used for pointed and satiric effect.

Pseudonyms adopted by authors are sometimes transposed forms of their names; thus "Calvinus" becomes "Alcuinus" (here V = U) or "François Rabelais" = "Alcofribas Nasier". The name "Voltaire" of François Marie Arouet fits this pattern, and is allowed to be an anagram of "Arouet, l[e] j[eune]" (U = V, J = I) that is, "Arouet the younger". Other examples include:

Several of these are "imperfect anagrams", letters having been left out in some cases for the sake of easy pronunciation.

Titles edit

Anagrams used for titles afford scope for some types of wit. Examples:

  • Homer Hickam's book Rocket Boys was adapted into the 1999 film October Sky.[38]
  • The tapes for the revival of the BBC show Doctor Who were labeled with the anagram Torchwood, which later went on to be used as the name for a spin-off show. In multi-episode shows, the program occasionally substitutes the anagram of an actor's name for the actual name to prevent revealing the true identity of the role (for instance, The Master) being played by the actor.
  • The New Wave band Missing Persons' best-selling album was called Spring Session M.
  • Hip-hop artist MF Doom recorded a 2004 album called Mm..Food.
  • Brian Eno's album Before and After Science includes a song entitled "King's Lead Hat", an anagram of "Talking Heads", a band Eno has worked with.
  • Juan Maria Solare's piano ballad "Jura ser anomalía" (literally "he/she swears to be an anomaly") is an anagram of the composer's full name. His composition for English horn titled "A Dot in Time" is an anagram of "Meditation", which describes the piece. The title of his piano piece that is a homage to Claude Debussy is "Seduce Us Badly".
  • Bill Evans's overdubbed piano elegy for fellow jazz pianist Sonny Clark is titled "N.Y.C.'s No Lark", and another composition, "Re: Person I Knew" is a tribute to his producer, Orrin Keepnews.
  • The title of Imogen Heap's album iMegaphone is an anagram of her name.
  • Progressive rock group Rush published a song on their 1989 album Presto titled "Anagram (for Mongo)" that makes use of anagrams in every line of the song.
  • The title of the fifth album by American rock band Interpol, El Pintor, is an anagram of the band's name and also Spanish for "the painter".
  • Many of the song titles on Aphex Twin's ...I Care Because You Do are anagrams of either "Aphex Twin", "The Aphex Twin", or "Richard D. James".
  • In Disney's 1964 film Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke played Mr. Dawes Sr. as the anagram of his name, Navckid Keyd. In the credits, the words unscrambled themselves to reveal his name.
  • The title of King Crimson's 1982 song Thela Hun Ginjeet is an anagram of "heat in the jungle".
  • Two albums released in 2022 by Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard titled "Made in Timeland" and "Laminated Denim".

Coincidences edit

In Hebrew, the name "Gernot Zippe" (גרנוט ציפה), the inventor of the Zippe-type centrifuge, is an anagram of the word "centrifuge" (צנטריפוגה).

The sentence "Name is Anu Garg", referring to anagrammer and founder of wordsmith.org Anu Garg, can be rearranged to spell "Anagram genius".[39]

Games and puzzles edit

 
The game of Boggle

Anagrams are in themselves a recreational activity, but they also make up part of many other games, puzzles and game shows. The Jumble is a puzzle found in many newspapers in the United States requiring the unscrambling of letters to find the solution. Cryptic crossword puzzles frequently use anagrammatic clues, usually indicating that they are anagrams by the inclusion of a descriptive term like "confused" or "in disarray". An example would be Businessman burst 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.

Numerous other games and contests involve some element of anagram formation as a basic skill. Some examples:

  • In Anagrams, players flip tiles over one at a time and race to take words. They can "steal" each other's words by rearranging the letters and extending the words.
  • In a version of Scrabble called Clabbers, the name itself is an anagram of Scrabble. Tiles may be placed in any order on the board as long as they anagram to a valid word.
  • On the British game show Countdown, contestants are given 30 seconds to make the longest word from nine random letters.
  • In Boggle, players make constrained words from a grid of sixteen random letters, by joining adjacent cubes.
  • On the British game show BrainTeaser, contestants are shown a word broken into randomly arranged segments and must announce the whole word. At the end of the game there is a "Pyramid" which starts with a three-letter word. A letter appears in the line below to which the player must add the existing letters to find a solution. The pattern continues until the player reaches the final eight-letter anagram. The player wins the game by solving all the anagrams within the allotted time.
  • In Bananagrams, players place tiles from a pool into crossword-style word arrangements in a race to see who can finish the pool of tiles first.

Ciphers edit

Multiple anagramming is a technique used to solve some kinds of cryptograms, such as a permutation cipher, a transposition cipher, and the Jefferson disk.[40] Solutions may be computationally found using a Jumble algorithm.

Methods of construction edit

Sometimes, it is possible to "see" anagrams in words, unaided by tools, though the more letters involved the more difficult this becomes. The difficulty is that for a word of n different letters, there are n! (factorial of n) different permutations and so n!-1 different anagrams of the word. Anagram dictionaries can also be used. Computer programs, known as "anagram search", "anagram servers", "anagram solvers", offer a much faster route to creating anagrams, and a large number of these programs are available on the Internet.[41][42] Some programs use the Anatree algorithm to compute anagrams efficiently.

The program or server carries out an exhaustive search of a database of words, to produce a list containing every possible combination of words or phrases from the input word or phrase using a jumble algorithm. Some programs (such as Lexpert) restrict to one-word answers. Many anagram servers (for example, The Words Oracle) can control the search results, by excluding or including certain words, limiting the number or length of words in each anagram, or limiting the number of results. Anagram solvers are often banned from online anagram games. The disadvantage of computer anagram solvers, especially when applied to multi-word anagrams, is their poor understanding of the meaning of the words they are manipulating. They usually cannot filter out meaningful or appropriate anagrams from large numbers of nonsensical word combinations. Some servers attempt to improve on this using statistical techniques that try to combine only words that appear together often. This approach provides only limited success since it fails to recognize ironic and humorous combinations.

Some anagrammatists indicate the method they used. Anagrams constructed without the aid of a computer are noted as having been done "manually" or "by hand"; those made by utilizing a computer may be noted "by machine" or "by computer", or may indicate the name of the computer program (using Anagram Genius).

There are also a few "natural" instances: English words unconsciously created by switching letters around. The French chaise longue ("long chair") became the American "chaise lounge" by metathesis (transposition of letters and/or sounds). It has also been speculated that the English "curd" comes from the Latin crudus ("raw"). Similarly, the ancient English word for bird was "brid".

Notable anagrammatists edit

The French king Louis XIII had a man named Thomas Billon appointed as his Royal Anagrammatist with an annual salary of 1200 pounds.[43] Among contemporary anagrammers, Anu Garg, created an Internet Anagram Server in 1994 together with the satirical anagram-based newspaper The Anagram Times. Mike Keith has anagrammed the complete text of Moby Dick.[44] He, along with Richard Brodie, has published The Anagrammed Bible that includes anagrammed version of many books of the Bible.[45] Popular television personality Dick Cavett is known for his anagrams of famous celebrities such as Alec Guinness and Spiro Agnew.[46]

Anagram animation edit

 
A computer-generated anagram animation

An animated anagram displays the letters of a word or phrase moving into their new positions.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "anagram". CollinsDictionary.com. HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved 22 September 2017.
  2. ^ "Nag A Ram". Mediaite. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
  3. ^ Anagrammatist, Dictionary.com. Retrieved on 12 August 2008.
  4. ^ "antigram". Definitions.net. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  5. ^ . PBS. 1 July 2008. Archived from the original on 22 June 2009. Retrieved 9 January 2017. This Emmy-nominated short enters the obsessive and fascinating world of anagrams. [Original article's link to video is dead, but link in archived article works.]
  6. ^ Of Anagrams, By H.B. Wheatley pg. 72, printed 1862 T. & W. Boone, New Bond Street, London
  7. ^ Guillaume de Machaut, "Here of a Sunday Morning", WBAI
  8. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lycophron" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 153.
  9. ^ Isaac Broydé, "Anagram " in Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906 full text
  10. ^ "Secrets of a Lost Art, part 1: Latin Anagrams - in Medias Res". 6 May 2018.
  11. ^ "Secrets of a Lost Art, part 1: Latin Anagrams - in Medias Res". 6 May 2018.
  12. ^ Cited in Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Of anagrams: a monograph treating of their history (1862); online text.
  13. ^ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1889). "ENT, SIR GEORGE, M.D. (1604–1689)". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. XVII (1st ed.). Smith, Elder & Co. p. 377. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  14. ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1896). "QUIN, WALTER (1575?–1634?)". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. XLVII (1st ed.). Smith, Elder & Co. p. 111. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  15. ^ Early Stuart Libels
  16. ^ Early Stuart Libels
  17. ^ Henry Benjamin Wheatley, On Anagrams (1862), p. 58.
  18. ^ Remains, 7th ed., 1674.
  19. ^

    Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
    In keen iambics, but mild anagram:
    Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
    Some peaceful province in acrostic land.
    There thou may'st wings display and altars raise,
    And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

  20. ^ Oxford Book of Word Games
  21. ^ Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud (2000), p. 146.
  22. ^ H. W. van Helsdingen, Notes on Two Sheets of Sketches by Nicolas Poussin for the Long Gallery of the Louvre, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 5, No. 3/4 (1971), pp. 172–184.
  23. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Anagram" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 910.
  24. ^ In his A Budget of Paradoxes, p. 82.
  25. ^ Robert Edoward Moritz, On Mathematics and Mathematicians (2007), p. 151.
  26. ^ Anna Stirling, William De Morgan and His Wife (1922) p. 64.
  27. ^ . Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 6 March 2009.
  28. ^ Friederike Ursula Eigler, Susanne Kord, The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature (1997), pp. 14–5.
  29. ^ Java, Rosalind I. "Priming and Aging: Evidence of Preserved Memory Function in an Anagram Solution Task." The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 105, No. 4. (Winter, 1992), pp. 541–548.
  30. ^ Miner, Ellis D.; Wessen, Randii R.; Cuzzi, Jeffrey N. (2007). "The scientific significance of planetary ring systems". Planetary Ring Systems. Springer Praxis Books in Space Exploration. Praxis. pp. 1–16. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-73981-6_1. ISBN 978-0-387-34177-4.
  31. ^ "Galileo's Anagrams and the Moons of Mars". Math Pages: History. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
  32. ^ "Galileo, Kepler, & Two Anagrams: Two Wrong Solutions Turn into Two Correct Solutions". Judge Starling.
  33. ^ Campbell, John W. Jr. (April 1937). "Notes". Beyond the Life Line. pp. 81–85. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  34. ^ Gjertsen, Derek (1986). The Newton Handbook. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 16. ISBN 9780710202796.
  35. ^ "Mr Mojo Risin'". BBC Radio 2. 29 June 2011. Retrieved 17 March 2021.
  36. ^ . Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2009.
  37. ^ I, Lucifer (Glen Duncan)
  38. ^ Lundin, Leigh (29 November 2009). "Anagrams". Word Play. Criminal Brief.
  39. ^ "The Anagram Hall of Fame". Wordsmith.org. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  40. ^ Bletchley Park Cryptographic Dictionary. Codesandciphers.org.uk. Retrieved on 2014-05-12.
  41. ^ "anagram search engine". Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  42. ^ "internet anagram server". Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  43. ^ Southey, Robert (1865). "CLXXIX". The Doctor, Etc. Longman, Greens, and Co. p. 467.
  44. ^ "Anagram by Mike Keith".
  45. ^ The Anagrammed Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon: Keith, Michael, Brodie, Richard: 9780963009722: Amazon.com: Books. ISBN 0963009729.
  46. ^ Williams, Alex (4 August 2018). "Dick Cavett's Best Outtakes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 1 January 2022. Retrieved 4 December 2019.

Further reading edit

External links edit

  • AnagramThis - An ad-free online anagram creator

anagram, other, uses, disambiguation, anagram, word, phrase, formed, rearranging, letters, different, word, phrase, typically, using, original, letters, exactly, once, example, word, anagram, itself, rearranged, into, which, easter, google, when, searching, wo. For other uses see Anagram disambiguation An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase typically using all the original letters exactly once 1 For example the word anagram itself can be rearranged into nag a ram which is an Easter egg in Google when searching for the word anagram 2 Animation for the anagram Listen Silent The original word or phrase is known as the subject of the anagram Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram Someone who creates anagrams may be called an anagrammatist 3 and the goal of a serious or skilled anagrammatist is to produce anagrams that reflect or comment on their subject Contents 1 Examples 2 History 2 1 Influence of Latin 2 2 Early modern period 2 3 Modern period 3 Applications 3 1 Establishment of priority 3 2 Pseudonyms 3 3 Titles 3 4 Coincidences 3 5 Games and puzzles 3 6 Ciphers 4 Methods of construction 5 Notable anagrammatists 6 Anagram animation 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksExamples edit nbsp An animation for the anagram President Obama a baptism redone Anagrams may be created as a commentary on the subject They may be a parody a criticism or satire For example New York Times monkeys write Church of Scientology rich chosen goofy cult McDonald s restaurants Uncle Sam s standard rot coronavirus carnivorous She Sells Sanctuary Santa shy less cruel or Satan cruel less shy An anagram may also be a synonym of the original word For example evil vile a gentleman elegant man silent listen An anagram that has a meaning opposed to that of the original word or phrase is called an antigram 4 For example restful fluster cheater teacher funeral real fun adultery true lady forty five over fifty Santa Satan They can sometimes change from a proper noun or personal name into an appropriate sentence William Shakespeare I am a weakish speller Madam Curie Radium came George Bush He bugs Gore Tom Marvolo Riddle I am Lord Voldemort They can change part of speech such as the adjective silent to the verb listen Anagrams itself can be anagrammatized as Ars magna Latin the great art 5 History editAnagrams can be traced back to the time of the ancient Greeks and were used to find the hidden and mystical meaning in names 6 They were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages for example with the poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut 7 They are said to date back at least to the Greek poet Lycophron in the third century BCE but this relies on an account of Lycophron given by John Tzetzes in the 12th century 8 In the Talmudic and Midrashic literature anagrams were used to interpret the Hebrew Bible notably by Eleazar of Modi im Later Kabbalists took this up with enthusiasm calling anagrams temurah 9 Anagrams in Latin were considered witty over many centuries Est vir qui adest explained below was cited as the example in Samuel Johnson s A Dictionary of the English Language They became hugely popular in the early modern period especially in Germany 10 Any historical material on anagrams must always be interpreted in terms of the assumptions and spellings that were current for the language in question In particular spelling in English only slowly became fixed There were attempts to regulate anagram formation an important one in English being that of George Puttenham s Of the Anagram or Posy Transposed in The Art of English Poesie 1589 Influence of Latin edit As a literary game when Latin was the common property of the literate Latin anagrams were prominent 11 Two examples are the change of Ave Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum Latin Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with you into Virgo serena pia munda et immaculata Latin Serene virgin pious clean and spotless and the anagrammatic answer to Pilate s question Quid est veritas Latin What is truth namely Est vir qui adest Latin It is the man who is here The origins of these are not documented Latin continued to influence letter values such as I J U V and W VV There was an ongoing tradition of allowing anagrams to be perfect if the letters were all used once but allowing for these interchanges This can be seen in a popular Latin anagram against the Jesuits Societas Jesu turned into Vitiosa seces Latin Cut off the wicked things Puttenham in the time of Elizabeth I wished to start from Elissabet Anglorum Regina Latin Elizabeth Queen of the English to obtain Multa regnabis ense gloria Latin By thy sword shalt thou reign in great renown he explains carefully that H is a note of aspiration only and no letter and that Z in Greek or Hebrew is a mere SS The rules were not completely fixed in the 17th century William Camden in his Remains commented singling out some letters AE K W and Z not found in the classical Roman alphabet 12 The precise in this practice strictly observing all the parts of the definition are only bold with H either in omitting or retaining it for that it cannot challenge the right of a letter But the Licentiats somewhat licentiously lest they should prejudice poetical liberty will pardon themselves for doubling or rejecting a letter if the sence fall aptly and think it no injury to use E for AE V for W S for Z and C for K and contrariwise William Camden Remains Early modern period edit When it comes to the 17th century and anagrams in English or other languages there is a great deal of documented evidence of learned interest The lawyer Thomas Egerton was praised through the anagram gestat honorem he carries honor the physician George Ent took the anagrammatic motto genio surget he rises through spirit genius which requires his first name as Georgius 13 James I s courtiers discovered in James Stuart a just master and converted Charles James Stuart into Claims Arthur s seat even at that point in time the letters I and J were more or less interchangeable Walter Quin tutor to the future Charles I worked hard on multilingual anagrams on the name of father James 14 A notorious murder scandal the Overbury case threw up two imperfect anagrams that were aided by typically loose spelling and were recorded by Simonds D Ewes Francis Howard for Frances Carr Countess of Somerset her maiden name spelled in a variant became Car findes a whore with the letters E hardly counted and the victim Thomas Overbury as Thomas Overburie was written as O O a busie murther an old form of murder with a V counted as U 15 16 William Drummond of Hawthornden in an essay On the Character of a Perfect Anagram tried to lay down rules for permissible substitutions such as S standing for Z and letter omissions 17 William Camden 18 provided a definition of 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 appliable i e applicable to the person named Dryden in MacFlecknoe disdainfully called the pastime the torturing of one poor word ten thousand ways 19 Eleanor Audeley wife of Sir John Davies is said to have been brought before the High Commission clarification needed 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 Sir John Lambe the dean of the Arches Dame Eleanor Davies Never soe mad a ladie 20 21 An example from France was a flattering anagram for Cardinal Richelieu comparing him to Hercules or at least one of his hands Hercules being a kingly symbol where Armand de Richelieu became Ardue main d Hercule difficult hand of Hercules 22 Modern period edit Examples from the 19th century are the transposition of Horatio Nelson into Honor est a Nilo Latin Honor is from the Nile and of Florence Nightingale into Flit on cheering angel 23 The Victorian love of anagramming as recreation is alluded to by the mathematician Augustus De Morgan 24 using his own name as an example Great Gun do us a sum is attributed to his son William De Morgan but a family friend John Thomas Graves was prolific and a manuscript with over 2 800 has been preserved 25 26 27 With the advent of surrealism as a poetic movement anagrams regained the artistic respect they had had in the Baroque period The German poet Unica Zurn who made extensive use of anagram techniques came to regard obsession with anagrams as a dangerous fever because it created isolation of the author 28 The surrealist leader Andre Breton coined the anagram Avida Dollars for Salvador Dali to tarnish his reputation by the implication of commercialism Applications editWhile anagramming is certainly a recreation first there are ways in which anagrams are put to use and these can be more serious or at least not quite frivolous and formless For example psychologists use anagram oriented tests often called anagram solution tasks to assess the implicit memory of young adults and adults alike 29 Establishment of priority edit Natural philosophers astronomers and others of the 17th century transposed their discoveries into Latin anagrams to establish their priority In this way they laid claim to new discoveries before their results were ready for publication Galileo used smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras for Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi Latin I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form for discovering the rings of Saturn in 1610 30 31 Galileo announced his discovery that Venus had phases like the Moon in the form Haec immatura a me iam frustra leguntur oy Latin These immature ones have already been read in vain by me oy that is when rearranged Cynthiae figuras aemulatur Mater Amorum Latin The Mother of Loves Venus imitates the figures of Cynthia the moon In both cases Johannes Kepler had solved the anagrams incorrectly assuming they were talking about the Moons of Mars Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles and a red spot on Jupiter Macula rufa in Jove est gyratur mathem respectively 32 By coincidence he turned out to be right about the actual objects existing In 1656 Christiaan Huygens using a better telescope than those available to Galileo figured that Galileo s earlier observations of Saturn actually meant it had a ring Galileo s tools were only sufficient to see it as bumps and like Galileo had published an anagram aaaaaacccccdeeeeeghiiiiiiillllmmnnnnnnnnnooooppqrrstttttuuuuu Upon confirming his observations three years later he revealed it to mean Annulo cingitur tenui plano nusquam coherente ad eclipticam inclinato Latin It Saturn is surrounded by a thin flat ring nowhere touching inclined to the ecliptic 33 When Robert Hooke discovered Hooke s law in 1660 he first published it in anagram form ceiiinosssttuv for ut tensio sic vis Latin as the extension so the force 34 Pseudonyms edit Anagrams are connected to pseudonyms by the fact that they may conceal or reveal or operate somewhere in between like a mask that can establish identity For example Jim Morrison used an anagram of his name in the Doors song L A Woman calling himself Mr Mojo Risin 35 The use of anagrams and fabricated personal names may be to circumvent restrictions on the use of real names as happened in the 18th century when Edward Cave wanted to get around restrictions imposed on the reporting of the House of Commons 36 In a genre such as farce or parody anagrams as names may be used for pointed and satiric effect Pseudonyms adopted by authors are sometimes transposed forms of their names thus Calvinus becomes Alcuinus here V U or Francois Rabelais Alcofribas Nasier The name Voltaire of Francois Marie Arouet fits this pattern and is allowed to be an anagram of Arouet l e j eune U V J I that is Arouet the younger Other examples include Damon Albarn Dan Abnormal Dave Barry Ray Adverb Arrigo Boito Tobia Gorrio Buckethead Death Cube K Daniel Clowes Enid Coleslaw Siobhan Donaghy Shanghai Nobody Glen Duncan Declan Gunn 37 Theodor Geisel Theo Le Sieg Edward Gorey Ogdred Weary Regera Dowdy or E G Deadworry and others Anna Madrigal A man and a girl Ted Morgan Sanche de Gramont Lorin Morgan Richards Marcil d Hirson Garron Vladimir Nabokov Vivian Darkbloom Vivian Bloodmark Blavdak Vinomori or Dorian Vivalkomb Several of these are imperfect anagrams letters having been left out in some cases for the sake of easy pronunciation Titles edit Anagrams used for titles afford scope for some types of wit Examples Homer Hickam s book Rocket Boys was adapted into the 1999 film October Sky 38 The tapes for the revival of the BBC show Doctor Who were labeled with the anagram Torchwood which later went on to be used as the name for a spin off show In multi episode shows the program occasionally substitutes the anagram of an actor s name for the actual name to prevent revealing the true identity of the role for instance The Master being played by the actor The New Wave band Missing Persons best selling album was called Spring Session M Hip hop artist MF Doom recorded a 2004 album called Mm Food Brian Eno s album Before and After Science includes a song entitled King s Lead Hat an anagram of Talking Heads a band Eno has worked with Juan Maria Solare s piano ballad Jura ser anomalia literally he she swears to be an anomaly is an anagram of the composer s full name His composition for English horn titled A Dot in Time is an anagram of Meditation which describes the piece The title of his piano piece that is a homage to Claude Debussy is Seduce Us Badly Bill Evans s overdubbed piano elegy for fellow jazz pianist Sonny Clark is titled N Y C s No Lark and another composition Re Person I Knew is a tribute to his producer Orrin Keepnews The title of Imogen Heap s album iMegaphone is an anagram of her name Progressive rock group Rush published a song on their 1989 album Presto titled Anagram for Mongo that makes use of anagrams in every line of the song The title of the fifth album by American rock band Interpol El Pintor is an anagram of the band s name and also Spanish for the painter Many of the song titles on Aphex Twin s I Care Because You Do are anagrams of either Aphex Twin The Aphex Twin or Richard D James In Disney s 1964 film Mary Poppins Dick Van Dyke played Mr Dawes Sr as the anagram of his name Navckid Keyd In the credits the words unscrambled themselves to reveal his name The title of King Crimson s 1982 song Thela Hun Ginjeet is an anagram of heat in the jungle Two albums released in 2022 by Australian rock band King Gizzard amp the Lizard Wizard titled Made in Timeland and Laminated Denim Coincidences edit In Hebrew the name Gernot Zippe גרנוט ציפה the inventor of the Zippe type centrifuge is an anagram of the word centrifuge צנטריפוגה The sentence Name is Anu Garg referring to anagrammer and founder of wordsmith org Anu Garg can be rearranged to spell Anagram genius 39 Games and puzzles edit nbsp The game of BoggleAnagrams are in themselves a recreational activity but they also make up part of many other games puzzles and game shows The Jumble is a puzzle found in many newspapers in the United States requiring the unscrambling of letters to find the solution Cryptic crossword puzzles frequently use anagrammatic clues usually indicating that they are anagrams by the inclusion of a descriptive term like confused or in disarray An example would be Businessman burst 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 Numerous other games and contests involve some element of anagram formation as a basic skill Some examples In Anagrams players flip tiles over one at a time and race to take words They can steal each other s words by rearranging the letters and extending the words In a version of Scrabble called Clabbers the name itself is an anagram of Scrabble Tiles may be placed in any order on the board as long as they anagram to a valid word On the British game show Countdown contestants are given 30 seconds to make the longest word from nine random letters In Boggle players make constrained words from a grid of sixteen random letters by joining adjacent cubes On the British game show BrainTeaser contestants are shown a word broken into randomly arranged segments and must announce the whole word At the end of the game there is a Pyramid which starts with a three letter word A letter appears in the line below to which the player must add the existing letters to find a solution The pattern continues until the player reaches the final eight letter anagram The player wins the game by solving all the anagrams within the allotted time In Bananagrams players place tiles from a pool into crossword style word arrangements in a race to see who can finish the pool of tiles first Ciphers edit Multiple anagramming is a technique used to solve some kinds of cryptograms such as a permutation cipher a transposition cipher and the Jefferson disk 40 Solutions may be computationally found using a Jumble algorithm Methods of construction editSometimes it is possible to see anagrams in words unaided by tools though the more letters involved the more difficult this becomes The difficulty is that for a word of n different letters there are n factorial of n different permutations and so n 1 different anagrams of the word Anagram dictionaries can also be used Computer programs known as anagram search anagram servers anagram solvers offer a much faster route to creating anagrams and a large number of these programs are available on the Internet 41 42 Some programs use the Anatree algorithm to compute anagrams efficiently The program or server carries out an exhaustive search of a database of words to produce a list containing every possible combination of words or phrases from the input word or phrase using a jumble algorithm Some programs such as Lexpert restrict to one word answers Many anagram servers for example The Words Oracle can control the search results by excluding or including certain words limiting the number or length of words in each anagram or limiting the number of results Anagram solvers are often banned from online anagram games The disadvantage of computer anagram solvers especially when applied to multi word anagrams is their poor understanding of the meaning of the words they are manipulating They usually cannot filter out meaningful or appropriate anagrams from large numbers of nonsensical word combinations Some servers attempt to improve on this using statistical techniques that try to combine only words that appear together often This approach provides only limited success since it fails to recognize ironic and humorous combinations Some anagrammatists indicate the method they used Anagrams constructed without the aid of a computer are noted as having been done manually or by hand those made by utilizing a computer may be noted by machine or by computer or may indicate the name of the computer program using Anagram Genius There are also a few natural instances English words unconsciously created by switching letters around The French chaise longue long chair became the American chaise lounge by metathesis transposition of letters and or sounds It has also been speculated that the English curd comes from the Latin crudus raw Similarly the ancient English word for bird was brid Notable anagrammatists editThe French king Louis XIII had a man named Thomas Billon appointed as his Royal Anagrammatist with an annual salary of 1200 pounds 43 Among contemporary anagrammers Anu Garg created an Internet Anagram Server in 1994 together with the satirical anagram based newspaper The Anagram Times Mike Keith has anagrammed the complete text of Moby Dick 44 He along with Richard Brodie has published The Anagrammed Bible that includes anagrammed version of many books of the Bible 45 Popular television personality Dick Cavett is known for his anagrams of famous celebrities such as Alec Guinness and Spiro Agnew 46 Anagram animation edit nbsp A computer generated anagram animationAn animated anagram displays the letters of a word or phrase moving into their new positions See also editAcronym Ambigram Anagrammatic poem Anagrams a board game Ananym Blanagram Constrained writing Isogram Letter bank Lipogram List of geographic anagrams and ananyms List of taxa named by anagrams London Underground anagram map Palindrome Pangram Rebus Sator Square Spoonerism Tautonym Word playReferences edit anagram CollinsDictionary com HarperCollins Publishers Retrieved 22 September 2017 Nag A Ram Mediaite Retrieved 22 July 2023 Anagrammatist Dictionary com Retrieved on 12 August 2008 antigram Definitions net Retrieved 31 July 2019 Ars Magna PBS 1 July 2008 Archived from the original on 22 June 2009 Retrieved 9 January 2017 This Emmy nominated short enters the obsessive and fascinating world of anagrams Original article s link to video is dead but link in archived article works Of Anagrams By H B Wheatley pg 72 printed 1862 T amp W Boone New Bond Street London Guillaume de Machaut Here of a Sunday Morning WBAI Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Lycophron Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 17 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 153 Isaac Broyde Anagram in Jewish Encyclopedia 1906 full text Secrets of a Lost Art part 1 Latin Anagrams in Medias Res 6 May 2018 Secrets of a Lost Art part 1 Latin Anagrams in Medias Res 6 May 2018 Cited in Henry Benjamin Wheatley Of anagrams a monograph treating of their history 1862 online text Stephen Leslie ed 1889 ENT SIR GEORGE M D 1604 1689 Dictionary of National Biography Vol XVII 1st ed Smith Elder amp Co p 377 Retrieved 15 September 2019 Lee Sidney ed 1896 QUIN WALTER 1575 1634 Dictionary of National Biography Vol XLVII 1st ed Smith Elder amp Co p 111 Retrieved 21 September 2019 Early Stuart Libels Early Stuart Libels Henry Benjamin Wheatley On Anagrams 1862 p 58 Remains 7th ed 1674 Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen iambics but mild anagram Leave writing plays and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land There thou may st wings display and altars raise And torture one poor word ten thousand ways Oxford Book of Word Games Hugh Trevor Roper Archbishop Laud 2000 p 146 H W van Helsdingen Notes on Two Sheets of Sketches by Nicolas Poussin for the Long Gallery of the Louvre Simiolus Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art Vol 5 No 3 4 1971 pp 172 184 Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Anagram Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 1 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 910 In his A Budget of Paradoxes p 82 Robert Edoward Moritz On Mathematics and Mathematicians 2007 p 151 Anna Stirling William De Morgan and His Wife 1922 p 64 AIM25 home page Archived from the original on 6 June 2011 Retrieved 6 March 2009 Friederike Ursula Eigler Susanne Kord The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature 1997 pp 14 5 Java Rosalind I Priming and Aging Evidence of Preserved Memory Function in an Anagram Solution Task The American Journal of Psychology Vol 105 No 4 Winter 1992 pp 541 548 Miner Ellis D Wessen Randii R Cuzzi Jeffrey N 2007 The scientific significance of planetary ring systems Planetary Ring Systems Springer Praxis Books in Space Exploration Praxis pp 1 16 doi 10 1007 978 0 387 73981 6 1 ISBN 978 0 387 34177 4 Galileo s Anagrams and the Moons of Mars Math Pages History Retrieved 16 March 2009 Galileo Kepler amp Two Anagrams Two Wrong Solutions Turn into Two Correct Solutions Judge Starling Campbell John W Jr April 1937 Notes Beyond the Life Line pp 81 85 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help Gjertsen Derek 1986 The Newton Handbook Routledge amp Kegan Paul p 16 ISBN 9780710202796 Mr Mojo Risin BBC Radio 2 29 June 2011 Retrieved 17 March 2021 Institute of Historical Research IHR home page Archived from the original on 30 September 2007 Retrieved 7 March 2009 I Lucifer Glen Duncan Lundin Leigh 29 November 2009 Anagrams Word Play Criminal Brief The Anagram Hall of Fame Wordsmith org Retrieved 2 March 2021 Bletchley Park Cryptographic Dictionary Codesandciphers org uk Retrieved on 2014 05 12 anagram search engine Retrieved 11 June 2021 internet anagram server Retrieved 11 June 2021 Southey Robert 1865 CLXXIX The Doctor Etc Longman Greens and Co p 467 Anagram by Mike Keith The Anagrammed Bible Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon Keith Michael Brodie Richard 9780963009722 Amazon com Books ISBN 0963009729 Williams Alex 4 August 2018 Dick Cavett s Best Outtakes The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Archived from the original on 1 January 2022 Retrieved 4 December 2019 Further reading editHenry Benjamin Wheatley Of Anagrams A Monograph Treating of Their History from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time Williams amp Norgate 1862 Word Ways The Journal of Recreational Linguistics Greenwood Periodicals et al 1968 ISSN 0043 7980 Howard W Bergerson Palindromes and Anagrams Dover Publications 1973 ISBN 978 0486206646 External links edit nbsp Look up anagram in Wiktionary the free dictionary AnagramThis An ad free online anagram creator Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Anagram amp oldid 1194606906, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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