ANAGRAM, the result of transposing the letters of a word or words in such a manner as to produce other words that possess meaning (Gr. ava back, and to write). The construction of anagrams is an amusement of great antiquity, its invention being ascribed without authority to the Jews, probably because the later Hebrew writers, particularly the Kabbalists, were fond of it, as serting that "secret mysteries are woven in the numbers of letters." Anagrams were known to the Greeks and also to the Romans, although the known Latin examples of words of more than one syllable are nearly all imperfect. They were popular throughout Europe during the middle ages and later, particularly in France, where a certain Thomas Billon was appointed "anagrammatist to the king" by Louis XIII. Dryden disdainfully called the pastime the "torturing of one poor word ten thousand ways," but many men and women of note have found amusement in it. A well known anagram is the change of Ave Maria, gratin plena, Dominus tecum into Virgo serena, pia, munda et inimaculata. Among others are the transposition of "Horatio Nelson" into "Honor est a Nilo"; and of "Florence Nightingale" into "Flit on, cheering angel." The pseudonyms adopted by authors are often transposed forms, more or less exact, of their names ; the most remarkable pseudonym of this class is the name "Voltaire," which the cele brated philosopher assumed instead of his family name, "Francois Marie Arouet," and which is generally allowed to be an anagram of "Arouet, l.j.," that is, Arouet the younger. Some of the astrono mers of the 17th century embodied their discoveries in anagrams with the design apparently of avoiding the risk that, while they were engaged in further verification, the credit of what they had found out might be claimed by others.
Another species of anagram, called "palindrome," is a word or sentence which may be read backwards as well as forwards, letter by letter, while preserving the same meaning; for example, the word "tenet."