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anagram

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.”

DEFINITIONS OF: anagram

1

n a word or phrase spelled by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase

Types:
antigram
an anagram that means the opposite of the original word or phrase
Type of:
word
a unit of language that native speakers can identify

v read letters out of order to discover a hidden meaning

Synonyms:
anagrammatise, anagrammatize
Type of:
read
interpret something that is written or printed
WORD FAMILY
USAGE EXAMPLES