

Mar 15, 2016 This week’s theme

Playing with words



This week’s words

rebus

calligram

ambigram

pangram

acrostic



“If I had a gun” Illustration: Nico189 / Nicola Laurora

Have you come up with a calligram of your own? Send it to words@wordsmith.org or post it below. Playing with wordsHave you come up with a calligram of your own? Send it to words@wordsmith.org or post it below. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg



calligram PRONUNCIATION: (KAL-i-gram)

MEANING: noun: A word, phrase, or piece of text arranged to form a picture of the subject described.

ETYMOLOGY: From French calligramme, from Greek calli- (beautiful) + -gram (something written). Earliest documented use: 1923. A word with the same root is callipygian

NOTES: Calligrammes. One of the best-known practitioners of the form was the French poet and writer Guillaume Apollinaire, whose work was published in the book

USAGE: “In his calligram, not only does [Joseph Cornell] mention the names of artists, poets, and musicians alongside the names of scientists and their inventions, he also transforms the building of the laboratory/observatory itself into a sort of puzzle of words.”

Analisa Pauline Leppanen-Guerra; Children’s Stories and “Child-Time” in the Works of Joseph Cornell and the Transatlantic Avant-Garde; Ashgate Publishing; 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world. -Ben Okri, poet and novelist (b. 15 Mar 1959)





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