Anagrams are words that can be reconstructed in order to produce another word with the same letters. For example Clint Eastwood would be an anagram of old west action (bet you didn’t know that one). Anagrams have a long history in the world, and they continue to be enjoyed by people to this day.
Anagrams have been around for a long time, and they’ve continued to evolve to adapt to the modern era. You need only look at your app store, either Android or iPhone and see a plethora of anagram related games. But there are some interesting facts you probably didn’t know about this style of wordplay. Want to know more about anagrams? Check out these interesting random facts of the day that can add up to your knowledge.
They Have A Long History
Anagrams go way, way back, all the way to the time of the ancient greeks. They believed that anagrams could be used as a method for finding the hidden meaning behind words. However, they became more popular during the middle ages in Europe with certain poets, and their popularity continued to increase from the 1500’s to 1800’s on the sub-continent. Many times poets or authors using anagrams would switch between the language of latin, and use it to construct English phrases. Although, anagrams became popular among areas of Europe like Germany during this time too
. One Scottish Poet – William Drummond even attempted to come up with acceptable rules for anagrams. These rules included whether or not an S could be substituted with a Z and so on. If you thought that there couldn’t be rules surrounding something as simple as anagrams, you would be wrong. Some people took their anagrams very seriously.
The Anagram Games
Anagrams have become a popular and fun way to play word games and they’ve increased in popularity in recent years. But board games involving anagrams go back as far as 1972. Anagrams in newspapers and comic books can be traced back to 1954 games included on the pages. The hardest part about solving anagram puzzles can be finding more words, thankfully there are resources on the internet to make this easier. It can be hard to come up with all the different solutions in a single anagram, and sometimes there can be more than a dozen!
Many people do not know that there is a format of Scrabble called Clabbers (an anagram of Scrabble) that only allows players to use words that are considered anagrams of another word. If you thought Scrabble was hard this version would be even harder.
The Anagrammist
Louis XIII the King of France in 1610 was so fond of anagrams he hired a professional Royal Anagrammist by the name of Thomas Billon, and he paid him for the position (rather well for the time). He was responsible for coming up with prophetic phrases, and deriving meaning from anagrams of people’s names. In total he served the court of France for a collective 15 years and even received a pension for his efforts. He was paid roughly 1200 French Livres per year, a value of around 300 000$ a year in today’s currency (or 1 pound of silver per livre). Professional anagrammist must have been taken very seriously around this time! Some modern examples of attempts at doing anagrammist activities include anagramming the texts of the bible as well as Moby Dick.
Anagrams As Pseudonyms
Many authors have historically used anagrams of their real name in order to hide their identity after publishing a novel. Voltaire was a use of an anagram from the name Arouet L.J. where V was interchangeable with U and J was interchangeable with I. Historically these have been used to help authors stray away from public criticism with controversial writings.
In the case of Voltaire he was critical of the church and chose a pseudonym in order to protect himself. Many authors continue to use pseudonyms for serious or satirical purposes today. Authors like Shakespeare included anagrams of characters in their plays in order to avoid public attention on their inclusion.
You probably did not realize all of the history that was behind something as simple as wordplay with anagrams. From being developed in ancient Greece, to kings hiring professional anagrammists, it’s clear that anagrams have a very long and colourful history. You might even enjoy attempting to solve anagrams in your daily life, or by playing board games and apps based on anagrams. Thankfully while you’re playing these games there are some tools that can help you find solutions so you don’t develop a headache. Although, I wouldn’t attempt picking up the profession of Royal Anagrammist anytime soon.
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