acrostic

Meaning

Noun

1. A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.
2. A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.
3. 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.

Adj

Of or pertaining to acrostics.

Synonyms

word square

pun

tongue twister

wordplay

word game

word play

Translations

acrostiche

acróstico

Akrostichon

acrostichon

akrostiş

Hyphenated as

acros‧tic

Pronounced as (IPA)

/əˈkɹɒstɪk/

Etymology

Cognate with French: acrostiche

In summary

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 (stíkhos, “row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to climb, go”)).