(n.) A composition, usually in verse, in which the first or the last letters of the lines, or certain other letters, taken in order, form a name, word, phrase, or motto.
(n.) A Hebrew poem in which the lines or stanzas begin with the letters of the alphabet in regular order (as Psalm cxix.). See Abecedarian.
(n.) Alt. of Acrostical
Example Sentences:
(1) Mr Elton's flourishing of "Augusta" is made the more repellent by Mrs Elton's mock-coy revelation that he wrote an acrostic on her name while courting her in Bath.
(2) With these factors in mind, health educators may set them out as an acrostic, based on the 1st letters of a slogan which could be taught to attendants: A Child Needs Personal Love With Which To Enjoy Protein.
(3) Top Gear's James May was once sacked by Autocar for working an acrostic (a message spelled out in the initial letters of each line) into a special supplement, which explained how editing the pull-out was a "real pain in the arse".
(4) Campaign strategies this time around have included an acrostic poem attacking a local Fairfax Regional paper, the Mandurah Mail, for being “Malicious Asshole Nutcases Dickheads” (it goes on, but we won’t).
Anagram
Definition:
(n.) Literally, the letters of a word read backwards, but in its usual wider sense, the change or one word or phrase into another by the transposition of its letters. Thus Galenus becomes angelus; William Noy (attorney-general to Charles I., and a laborious man) may be turned into I moyl in law.
(v. t.) To anagrammatize.
Example Sentences:
(1) Priming effects in a test of anagram solution were compared with recognition memory in young and older adults.
(2) This was the case even when the words were anagrams.
(3) Tasks included the digit symbol substitution test, the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test, anagram solution, and unsolvable puzzles.
(4) Solving anagrams involved more effort than did simply typing words, as indexed by response time.
(5) After completing a mood checklist, all subjects worked on an anagram task presented as a second experiment by a second experimenter.
(6) Sixty-four subjects were administered two tests of explicit memory (selective recall and recognition) and four tests of implicit memory (identification in a perceptual clarification procedure, word-fragment completion, tachistoscopic identification, and anagram solution).
(7) 48 fourth-and fifth-grade boys and girls (assigned to low, middle, and high anxiety groups by their scores on the Test Anxiety Scale for Children) performed anagram tasks in the presence of an experimenter also working on anagrams.
(8) Single-solution anagrams were chosen from lists of age-appropriate vocabulary words high in concrete imagery or low in imagery (abstract).
(9) The self-esteem of male and female competitive athletes was compared after each was provided either positive or negative (verbal) informational feedback on a nonathletic task, a series of single-solution anagrams.
(10) An evaluation of the indices proposed in the literature regarding measures of anagram difficulty was made by asking three groups (ages 17-26, 39-51, 59-76) of adults (n = 54) to solve a list of 30 anagrams.
(11) Cognitive (arithmetic, anagram, and digit-string memorization) tasks each at two levels of difficulty were matched for reported unpleasantness with autopsy slides to provide stimuli in which stress reactions were constant but cognitive processing requirements varied.
(12) As predicted by the learned helplessness model of depression, nondepressed subjects given unsolvable problems showed anagram deficits parallel to those found in naturally occurring depression.
(13) The article confirms previous results on the stability with age of anagram ability.
(14) Even stronger differences were seen with regard to the number of complete anagrams.
(15) filled interval and their number of correct single solution anagrams tended to correlate negatively with estimated time.
(16) 10.16am BST More helpful suggestions , this from Mark Judd: I fully understand your desire not to mention the new 'Him', but you could use this anagram of his name and it seems apt int he circumstances: 'Grab The Ale' I like it.
(17) Even without the clues sown throughout the album (Palace Posy is an anagram of apocalypse), it audibly suggests a hollowed-out landscape in the aftermath of some terrible event.
(18) The four types of stressful stimuli were: a cold pressor; a stressful film depicting industrial accidents; unsolvable anagrams; and an aversive car horn.
(19) The effects of these treatments on performance were examined by measuring trials to criterion on a subsequent anagram task.
(20) It was also found that the cognitive variable mediating the effects of these indices in middle aged and elderly subjects was crystallized ability, suggesting an experiential basis for the effects of both task and organismic variables as determinants of anagram problem solving in adulthood.