WORD PLAY

ANAPHONE (or ANAPHONY)

the acoustic counterpart of the ANAGRAM. In an anaphone, the sounds composing one word or phrase are rearranged to make another word or phrase. Example: In "Thus is a universe very soon," the sounds of "very soon" and "universe" are nearly the same.

ACROSTIC

a composition, usually verse, arranged in such a way that it spells words, phrases, or sentences when certain letters are selected according to an orderly sequence.

IDIOM

a use of words peculiar to a given language; an expression that cannot be translated literally. Example: "to carry out."

ALLELOGRAPH

a variant form of a word used near its basic form as in Wordsworth's "Ne're saw I, never felt, a calm so deep" ("ne'er" and "never").

ANANYM

a word fabricated by spelling another word backward. Example: On the title page of Martin Geldart's Sons of Belial, the author's name appears as "Nitram Tradleg."

ACRONYM

a word formed by combining the initial letters or syllables of a series of words to form a name, as "radar," from "radio detecting and ranging."

ANAGRAM

a word or phrase made by transposing the letters of another, as "cask" is an anagram of "sack," sometimes used to conceal names or messages. The novel Erewhon is an anagram of "nowhere." Other examples: scared - sacred, cold - clod, clam - calm, slate - tales, stone - notes, hated - death.

CATCHWORD

a word so often repeated that it is identified with a person or object; also the word printed at the top of a column or page to indicate the first or last word on that page.

HETERONYM

a word spelled the same an another but pronounced and defined differently, such as "does" (a verb) and "does" (a noun).

FALSE FRIEND

a word that people think they know the meaning of; often foreign words that seem to mean the same as native ones as is German Weib means "woman" not "wife."

PARAGRAM

a word that resembles another and is used in its place for the sake of EUPHEMISM, APOTROPAIC deformation, insult, avoidance of libel, or some other purpose. Example: "Gad," "gosh," and "golly" are paragrams of "God."

VOX NIHILI

a worthless or meaningless word.

ANALYTIC-PREFIXAL

altering verbal units by adding a separate element at the beginning, as in placing "to" in front of a verb in English to form an infinitive like "to see."

TELESTICH

an ACROSTIC in which the final letters form a word.

OCCUPATIO

device somewhat like OCCULTATIO, especially when one says "Not to mention..." but mentions it anyway.

OCCULTATIO

emphasizing something by appearing to pass over it or by insinuation.

FOLK ETYMOLOGY

like FALSE ETYMOLOGY and formerly called popular etymology, an unfamiliar word is reshaped into something familiar as when "spit and image" becomes "spitting image."

METANALYSIS

reinterpretation or misconstruction of the division between words or other units, a when "a nadder" becomes "an adder."

ANASTOMOSIS

scientific term for the interconnection between two entities, such as vessels, channels, or cavities; also, the folding of one word between parts of another, as in Joyce's "underdarkneath" in Ulysses.

NOTANDUM (plural NOTANDA)

something to be noted. An 18th century volume was title Notanda Electa Britannica: Select Observations Relative to Matters Ecclesiastical and Political: Adapted to the Circumstances of the Present Times.

NOTABILIUM (plural NOTABILIA)

something worth noticing. 19th century volume was titled Notabilia; or, Curious and Amusing Facts About Many Things, Explained and Illustrated.

NEXILITY

rare word for compactness of utterance.

TAG

(1) interrogative clause after a question used as a confirmation or assertion, such as, "It's hot, isn't it?" (2) label, nickname, or EPITHET (3) addition at the end of a piece to add a moral, quote, or summary (4) a refrain at the end of a song or speech.

VULGARIA

1) through the early 17th century, a set of vernacular selections to be translated into Latin 2) a collective term for items considered vulgar (however defined) in a given collection, as in descriptions of "the vulgaria in Pepys's library."

PORTMANTEAU WORDS

PORTMANTEAU WORDS - words formed by telescoping two words into one, as the making of "smog" from "smoke" and "fog" or "brunch" from "breakfast" and "lunch." Lewis Carroll gave the name to words he created for Through the Looking Glass like "slithy" from "lithe" and "slimy." Linguists call this process blending.

PARAPHEMISM

a coinage designed to avoid confusion or embarrassment. Rape- seed is an herb used in "rape-seed oil" which is now known as "canola oil."

SYNCOPE

a cutting short of words through the omission of a letter or a syllable. It is different from ELISION in that it is usually confined to the omission of elements (usually vowels) inside a word, whereas elision usually runs two words together by the omission of a final or initial sound. Example: "ev'ry" for "every."

BOUTS-RIMES

a literary game in which players are given lists of rhyming words and are expected to write impromptu verses with the rhymes in the order given; a popular pastime in France since the 17th century, of the BLUESTOCKINGS in England, and in Scotland in the 19th century

COMPENSATION

a means of making up for omissions in a line, usually unstressed syllables; a form of SUBSTITUTION.

HIATUS

a pause or break between two vowel sounds not separated by a consonant; the opposite of ELISION. In logic, it is the omission of one of the logical steps in a process of reasoning.

META

a prefix often applied by contemporary critics to various literary terms, forming such words as METACRITICISM and METAFICTION. It means "beyond, above, of a higher logical type."

METASTASIS

a rapid transition from one point to another, sometimes for the sake of deception.

MISREADING

a reading that makes a mistake in perception or interpretation. A sign reading "FINE FOR FISHING" could be interpreted that it is a fine place for fishing or that you would be fined for fishing.

HOMEOPTOTON

a series of words in the same grammatical form as in Tennyson's "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

HOWLER

a small error that begins in innocence or ignorance and ends in folly and potential embarrassment. Example: In the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote "semitic muscle" when he meant "seminal muscle."

CRYPTARITHM

a sophisticated puzzle in which letters of the alphabet are assigned a numerical value so that a spelled-out formula is true of both the words and the numbers.

ABECEDARIUS

an ACROSTIC, the initial letters of whose successive lines form the alphabet. Strictly speaking, each letter of the line should begin with the same letter, but this is difficult. Alaric Alexander Watts wrote one in 1817 as follows: "An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.... Yield, yield, ye youths! Ye yeomen, yield your yell! Zeus', Zarpater's, Zoroaster's zeal!" Many Psalms are Hebrew alphabet acrostics.

SPOONERISM

an accidental interchange of sounds, usually the initial consonants, in two or more words, such as "bl ushing cr ow" for "cr ushing bl ow." Named for Dr. Spooner of Oxford, who was prone to these.

FALSE ETYMOLOGY

an erroneous but plausible etymology forced onto a word by a common misconception. What began as "duck tape" (tape made of heavy duck fabric) became "duct tape" because it can be used on a duct.

MALAPROPISM

an inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another, which resembles it. It is named for Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan's The Rivals, who said such things as "a progeny of learning."

ENANTIOMORPH

an object that is a mirror image of another; written ones are in capital letters like "MAT" / "TAM."

BLENDS (or BLEND WORDS)

another name for PORTMANTEAU WORDS.

PREFIX

material placed at the beginning of a word or word group, often joined to a basic word to form a new word. Example: reform - "re" is the prefix.

ACROPHONY

naming a written symbol or letter of the alphabet by using a word whose initial sound is the sound represented by that letter. Phoenician "Aleph" which means "ox," became the name of the first letter in the word.

HIERONYMY

the idea of sacred names and naming, more recently applied to any special name for persons, places, gods, days, months, and so forth.

METAPLASM

the movement of any element in a piece of language from its customary place; any alteration of words or patterns, including APOCOPE and SYNCOPE.

APHAERESIS

the omission of an initial, unstressed syllable at the beginning of a word, as in " 'mid" for "amid," or " 'neath" for "beneath."

HYPHERESIS

the omission of material in the body of a word, as when "grandmother" becomes "gammer."

ELLIPSIS (or ELLIPSE)

the omission of one or more words that, while essential to a grammatic structure, are easily supplied.

ELISION

the omission of part of a word. Example: "th'orient" for "the orient" or "ne'er" for "never."

APOCOPE

the omission of sounds from a word, as "even" for "evening."

PAREGMENON

the same as POLYPTOTON: the use of two different words derived from the same root, as in this passage from Frost's "Directive": "Your destination and your destiny's/ A brook...."

SUBSTITUTION

the use of one kind of foot in place of that normally demanded by the pattern of a verse, as a trochee for an iamb, etc.

DICTION

the use of words on oral or written discourse, including vocabulary (words) and syntax (word order). In Frost's "Whose woods these are I think I know," the vocabulary is simple, but the syntax is unusual. Earlier, diction included elocution style, correctness, and general communication.

HOBSON-JOBSON

transforming something foreign into a more familiar native sound, as in a child transforming the Christmas song Tannenbaum into "atomic bomb." In Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, "pleurosis" becomes "blue roses."

HETEROSIS

when one form of a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb is replaced by another as in "A fool and his money is soon parted" which uses "is" in place of "are."

COINED WORDS

words consciously manufactured, as opposed to those entering the language as a result of some more usual process of language development. Some words are created by businesses looking for catchiness or by combining words, like "Nabisco" for "National Biscuit Company."

PALINDROME

writing that reads the same from left to right and from right to left, such as the word "civic." It is a species of chiasmus.