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Acrostic
Definitions
- 1 Of or pertaining to acrostics. also, attributive
"Other ancients have suggested that the original verses were written in hieroglyphs and also mentioned the acrostic code."
- 1 A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message. also, attributive
"He [Judas Maccabeus] was termed Mackabæus, becauſe he carried in his ſtandard, or vexillum militare, theſe four Hebrew letters, Mem, Chaph, Beth, and Jod, or M. C. B. and J. whereunto their points being added, which are their vowells, (for others they have none) his mott was Mackabai, whereof he took his name. Theſe four letters are the acroſtickes or initiall letters of theſe four wordes in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Exodus, Mi Chamocha Baalim Jehovah, which is in Latin Quis ſicut tu Deorum Jehova? ["Who among the gods is like you, O Adonai?", Exodus 15:11.]"
- 2 verse in which certain letters such as the first in each line form a word or message wordnet
- 3 A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet. also, attributive
"The Whole [of the Book of Zephaniah] is wrote in a very lively, tender, and pathetic Stile; and all the Chapters, except the laſt, (which ſeems to have been of later Compoſition than the reſt) are in Acroſtick Verſe, i.e. every Line, or Couplet, begins, in an Alphabetical Order, with ſome Letter in the Hebrew Alphabet."
- 4 a puzzle where you fill a square grid with words reading the same down as across wordnet
- 5 A kind of word puzzle, whose solution forms an anagram of a quotation, with its initial letters often forming the name of the person quoted. also, attributive
"those who rack their brains in solving the Acrostics in our Sunday papers will, perchance, be saved many a rack and many a failure by our reverse alphabetical arrangement"
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French acrostiche, acrostique (“acrostic”) (modern French acrostiche), and its etymon Late Latin acrostichis, from Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), from ἄκρο- (ákro-, prefix indicating, among other things, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos, “row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to climb, go”)).
Borrowed from Middle French acrostiche, acrostique (“acrostic”) (modern French acrostiche), and its etymon Late Latin acrostichis, from Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), from ἄκρο- (ákro-, prefix indicating, among other things, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos, “row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to climb, go”)).
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