It’s summer time, but that doesn’t mean my kids have to stop using their brains. Remember that cool “Puzzle a Day” calendar I told you about in January? It’s still on the kitchen table, and now my kids have more time to do the puzzles!
I must admit, sometimes the vocabulary from the calendar confuses us. We discussed many baffling terms from the puzzles over pasta and salad one night when we were finally sitting down together to eat. We pondered questions like:
What’s the difference between an acrostic and an acronym?
Have you ever heard of an anagram?
What the heck is a rebus?
Such is the conversation in a word nerd’s home. 🙂
Of course, I HAD to clear this up for my family, and you. So here goes, some essential vocab all puzzle people and word nerds should know:
- Acronym- a word formed from the first letters of each one of the words in a phrase, such as scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). I use acronyms to help me make my various online passwords. (e.g. ILBbaICL = I like big books and I cannot lie.)
- Acrostic– a composition, usually in verse, in which sets of letters (such as the initial letters of the lines) taken in order form a word or phrase; look at this great example from my Facebook friend Jeanette Duwe:
- Anagram- a word or phrase made by changing the order of the letters in another word or phrase (from Greek anagrammatisimos to transpose letters)
I found these funny anagrams at www.fun-with-words.com/anagrams
Dormitory – – dirty room
The eyes – – they see
Conversation – voices rant on
- Homophone– a word that is pronounced like another word but is different in meaning, origin, or spelling.
Mnemonic – see below and Pneumonic- related to the lungs
Their, there, and they’re
- Mnemonic from Greek mimneskesthai– to remember; adj – assisting memory; noun – a device that helps people remember something.
My very excellent mother just served us nachos helps many children remember the planets in order from the sun. (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.) I remember when the mnemonic ended with “nine pizzas.” So sorry, Pluto.
- Rebus– a riddle or puzzle made up of letters, pictures, or symbols whose names sound like the parts or syllables of a word or phrase. We see a lot of these in the kids’ Sunday School papers or in puzzle books from MindWare. Can you figure out the one below:
🙂
Camper
Can you give an example of one of these puzzle terms? Or can you share a puzzle term I missed?
For further playing/ learning:
- Literarydevices.net – definitions and examples of literary terms
- Fun-with-words.com – wordplay games and definitions. ***Note – this site runs ads across the top of its page, some with questionable content, e.g. – a picture of a scantily clad woman advertising games for “Male Gamers Only”
Thanks for stopping by.
Julia
