Talk:Anagram

Is anagram just for words that are already words?

Are jumbled letter such as ogd for dog or chosol for school still anagrams even though they aren't actual words or just things like god to dog or whatever. If jumbled words are not anagrams this should be include in the main article clearly. Thanks. Please respond. Aidan Greenhalgh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aidan Greenhalgh (talk • contribs) 07:51, 10 December 2010

No, the rearrangement has to yield a real word, name, or phrase. See the definition from OED above, in re-arrangement of letters = anagram (emphasis added): A transposition of the letters of a word, name, or phrase, whereby a new word or phrase is formed. --Thnidu (talk) 22:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Wording in opening

"However, the goal of serious or skilled anagrammatists is to produce anagrams that in some way reflect or comment on the subject."

I disagree. Yes, anagrammatists always like to find these, but I hardly think it's a "goal".--Pittsburghmuggle (talk) 10:19, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

(UTC)

Mistake in article. "Ardue main d'Hercule" / "Armand de Richelieu"

"Ardue main d'Hercule" (2 u's and 1 i) is not an anagram of "Armand de Richelieu" (1u and 2i's) as the article states. Is there a spelling error?

Bmedwar (talk) 10:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC) Brian Edwards bmedwar

A (PBS) Youtube vid of interest

"Ars Magna," a short documentary film about the obsessive and fascinating world of anagrams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isH75q3As3k --Jerome Potts (talk) 08:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Subliminal anagrams?!

Hi, forgive me for doing this, sub-newbie user afraid to step on toes by editing. But doesn't that line about "subliminal anagrams" sound awfully dodgy to you? It's unsourced, and the main Google result for it is... this article. Most other results are very weak, and the relevant uses of the phrase are all recent enough that they could have been incited by this article. I would love to see a source on this term, if any such thing exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.197.67.53 (talk) 22:16, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok I removed that sentence. Some people use the expression "partial anagram" for this. --76.117.53.100 (talk) 14:59, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

'Madam' Curie

This is a most unfortunate example, since Marie Curie's French title was not 'Madam' but 'Madame', so the anagram doesn't work! If 'Madame' is used in English as a title for women, then always in the French form - 'Madam' is used as a form of address ('Certainly, madam'), but never with the woman's name, so 'Madam Curie' doesn't exist.213.127.210.95 (talk) 15:01, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Not "Hamlet"

I've removed the example

• Shakespeare's Hamlet is an anagram for the Danish Prince Amleth.

Though it's an anagram, that's purely coincidental; Shakespeare didn't invent it, and neither did anyone else. It's widely accepted to be simply a descendant of the older name or one of its variants, like Edward from Anglo-Saxon Éadweard. See Amleth § Name, and

It is well-known that Hamlet is related to Amlethus, found in Gesta Danorum, by Saxo Grammaticus."

Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 18:23, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

References

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Anagram. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081004220025/http://1911encyclopedia.org:80/Lycophron to http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Lycophron

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:58, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

reflect or comment

The end of the lede section and the beginning of the first titled section:

the goal of serious or skilled anagrammatists is to produce anagrams that in some way reflect or comment on the subject.

Examples

Such an anagram may be a synonym or antonym of its subject, a parody, a criticism, or praise.

In editing and in mobile view, the reference in "such an anagram" is clear, but in the default desktop view the table of contents intervenes:

Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram. However, the goal of serious or skilled anagrammatists is to produce anagrams that in some way reflect or comment on the 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 See also
    6 References
    7 Further reading

Examples
Such an anagram may be a synonym or antonym of its subject, a parody, a criticism, or praise.

So I'm inserting a short parenthetical explanation, with a hidden comment asking editors to please not delete it, and pointing to this talk section.

--Thnidu (talk) 23:38, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

It is still confusing even with the parenthetical. Ideally each section should somewhat stand on its own. Assuming the reader has just read the previous section and understands that you are continuing the discussion from the previous section is not really good writing. I'm taking a quick stab at rewriting a little. Feel free to re-edit, of course.

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 20:44, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

non-word anagrams

should there be a paragraph/section stating that there are non-word anagrams? i will show an example of what i mean. Awdry-Dryaw. Dryaw is the name of a station in thomas and friends. Awdry is the last name of the man who wrote the railway series. neither of these words are real. --JGalaxy19 (talk) 23:38, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

No. This is just trivial. Any name can be turned into an anagram by changing the letter order and then using the result to name something else. Meters (talk) 23:46, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Ok. Also, if you mean that I don't have any sources, This is one that is probably true: https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/Dryaw#Trivia --JGalaxy19 (talk) 00:00, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

I said nothing about sources. It's simply not worth mentioning. You can make an anagram out of any random string of letters too, but so what. Meters (talk) 00:04, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

In other scripts

I suppose that anagrams work in other alphabets (Cyrillic, Greek) in a similar fashion, with some license for related letters. But, are they used in abugidas, syllabaries, Hanzi, Hangul? Do they have special rules and licences Currently there is only one Hebrew example. --Error (talk) 09:38, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Citation needed?

Part of this article reads "In Hebrew, the name 'Gernot Zippe' (גרנוט ציפה), the inventor of the Zippe-type centrifuge, is an anagram of the word 'centrifuge' (צנטריפוגה).[citation needed]" Why does this need a citation? Can't you tell those words are anagrams by using your eyes? Sandyplease (talk) 00:04, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

This isn't tagged now, but presumably it was originally because it includes a claim in terms of "the inventor of etc".LateFatherKarma (talk) 10:37, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Palindrome question

Thread retitled from Anagrams are words that can be read the same forwards and backwards, while Palindromes are sentences with letters that can be read the same forward and backward, so when did Anagram become a word for "word play"?.

Anagrams are not palindromes

The following is a closed discussion. Please do not modify it.

The definition for anagrams are words that can be read the same forwards and backwards, like Anna, while Palindromes are sentences with letters that can be read the same forward and backward, so when did Anagram become a word for "word play"? ~2026-24074-54 (talk) 13:10, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

You are mistaken. An anagram is not a word that reads the same forwards and backwards. That's a palindrome. An anagram is a word that contains the same letters as another word but in a different order. The meaning of the term anagram hasn't changed in the last few hundred years. For example, here's a quote from 1606: "... IVNO, whose great name is VNIO, in the anagram ...". — Chrisahn (talk) 13:47, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

that's letter-play or wordplay, not anagram, which is when letters of a word are read the same forward and backward. Palindrome is only for sentences that have letters reading the same forward and backward. ~2026-24074-54 (talk) 14:31, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

You're wrong. Good bye. — Chrisahn (talk) 14:42, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Anagrams are words that can be read the same forwards and backwards, and this is different from Palindromes, which refer to sentences that can be read forward and backward. ~2026-24074-54 (talk) 14:47, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

As Chrisahn pointed out, this is incorrect. Please drop this. Meters (talk) 19:30, 19 April 2026 (UTC)