Anagramme

Anagramme is a term used to describe a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another, using all the original letters exactly once. In English, the common term is “anagram,” but the spellings anagramme appear in other languages and historical texts. Anagrams rely on letter-for-letter reordering and typically ignore spaces, punctuation, and capitalization when evaluating equivalence.

Etymology: The concept comes from Greek ana- “up, again” and grámma “letter,” and has been attested in Latin and French traditions. In practice, anagrams can be single-word transformations (listen ↔ silent) or multiword rearrangements (astronomer ↔ moon starer; the eyes ↔ they see).

Types: Perfect anagrams rearrange all letters exactly to form a new phrase or word. Near or partial anagrams allow small substitutions or omissions and are common in puzzles. Some games distinguish between whole-name anagrams (using every letter) and phrase anagrams (ignoring spaces).

Applications: Anagrammes are used in word puzzles, cryptographic wordplay, and literary devices. They can reveal hidden connections between terms, title-wordplay, or mnemonic devices. In popular culture they appear in puzzles, competitions, and branding experiments.

Example note: The astronomer–moon starer pair is a frequently cited long anagram. While entertaining, most practical anagrams are evaluated by strict rules in puzzles or lexicons.