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The Anagram Times
Odds 'n' Ends
Cartoon: Dan Piraro
- Louis XIII, the King of France during early seventeenth century, appointed a Royal Anagrammatist (Thomas Billon) for a handsome salary.
- The word "anagrams" is an anagram of "ars magna", Latin for "great art".
- The word stifle is an anagram of itself.
- Japan's former capital city (Kyoto, CE 794-1868) and present capital city (Tokyo) names are anagrams of each other.
- In Oklahoma, two towns at the opposite ends of the state are anagrams of each other: Tulsa & Altus.
- Kingdom of Java's (Indonesia) former capital city was Kartasura and then moved to Surakarta.
- Ever wondered why there isn't another word that can be made by rearranging the letters of the word anagram?
- Anagrammist n. : one who composes anagrams and when asked for the four points of the compass is likely to reply: "thorn, shout, seat, and stew."
- An anagram which has reverse spelling of a word and itself spells a proper word is called a semordnilap.
- The name of synthetic fiber Spandex is an anagram of expands.
- Clabbers is a variant of the Scrabble game. In this game, all the rules are the same as for Scrabble except for one: all words have to be anagrams of real words.
- Do Lewis Carroll's poems prove he was Jack the Ripper? See The Straight Dope.
- It's said that the right to lampoon royalty and politicians, using anagrams, was enshrined in English law, when King John signed the Magna Carta (Anagram Act) in 1215. (-:
- Also Newton supposedly used an anagram in describing calculus in a letter to Leibniz. See this and the book A Passion for Mathematics: Numbers, Puzzles, Madness, Religion, and the Quest for Reality (page 30).
- In anagramming, we break a word into letters, but some people get carried away. Tom 7 breaks letters as well to come up with anagraphs (video, 12 min.). Brilliant!
Auto Anagram
A word that is an anagram of itself.
- Camry, a car from Toyota is an anagram of my car.
- Elantra, a car from Hyundai is an anagram of A rental.
- Subaru, a car brand from Fuji is an anagram of U R a bus.
Pangram
A pangram is a sentence that uses all letters of the alphabet. So if you are thinking about finding anagrams of all letters from A to Z, what you are looking for is a pangram that is 26 letter long. Here are a few:
Check out more at Pangram Finder.
- Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz.
Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.
Star Anagram
An anagram that does not have the same adjacent letters as in its original word or phrase. Example: FIBER = BRIEF. If you put the letters of the original in a circle and trace the anagram, you get a star. In case of five-letter star anagrams you get a perfect pentagram.
Star anagrams were invented by Dan Barker. He wrote about them in Gift of Fire, 1994. See a related paper Star Anagram Detection and Classification (by Jason Parker & Dan Barker).
Anigram
An anigram is anagram which animates to show itself at work. An example of anigram is at the home page of this site which shows how letters of the phrase "Internet Anagram Server" rearrange themselves to make "I, Rearrangement Servant". Make your own anigrams.
Anugram
An anugram is a true anagram. e.g.Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one
uno + catorce = cuatro + once (Spanish: 1 + 14 = 4 + 11)
dos + trece = tres + doce (Spanish: 2 + 13 = 3 + 12)
(by Lee Sallows, published in Word Ways, Feb 1992)
All anugrams are anagrams, but not all anagrams are anugrams.
The word 'anagram' in various languages
Spanish:
Anagrama = Amar gana (Love wins)German:
Anagramm = Am ragmanFrench:
AnagrammeItalian:
AnagrammaPortuguese:
Anagrama
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