ACROSTIC • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Acrostic

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noun

Acrostic n.

A composition, usually in verse, in which the first or the last letters of the lines, or certain other letters, taken in order, form a name, word, phrase, or motto.

A Hebrew poem in which the lines or stanzas begin with the letters of the alphabet in regular order (as Psalm cxix.). See Abecedarian.

Double acrostic, a species of enigma, in which words are to be guessed whose initial and final letters form other words.

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Etymology of 'Acrostic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Acrostic" Quotes from Famous Books

... many chapters. Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 have each 22 verses or just the number of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 has 66 verses or just three times the number of the alphabet. The first four chapters are acrostic, that is each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In chapter three, each letter is used in order and is three times repeated as the initial ...

— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... study Greek, Ellis. We get it from two words in the Greek, or from one word made up of two others, which mean extreme, or beginning and order. In an acrostic the beginnings of the lines are arranged in order. Do you understand how we ...

— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... Duchess of Portsmouth[97] applied to the Duke of York, who may have consulted his Cordelier confessor, Mansuete, about procuring a priest, and the priest was smuggled into the king's room by the Duchess and Chiffinch.[98] Now the letters are a verbal acrostic of Pere Mansuete a Cordelier Friar, and a syllabic acrostic of PortsMouth and ChifFinch. This is a singular coincidence. Macaulay adopted the first interpretation, preferring it to the second, which I brought before him as the conjecture of a near relative of my own. But Mansuete is not mentioned ...

— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... cronicam compilavit Frater Ranulphus Cestrensis monachus"; i.e. Brother Ralph, monk of Chester, compiled the present chronicle. I mention this curious device on the part of Higden because another similar acrostic occurs elsewhere. It so happens that Higden's Polychronicon was continued, after his death, by John Malverne, who brought down the history to a later date, and included in it an account of a certain ...

— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat

... uses to lay the outsides of his verses even (like a bricklayer) by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle with rubbish. In this he imitates Ben Jonson, ...

— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... be dead in an hour," he said, "the fact of your being a dyspeptic need not trouble you any more than if you were an acrostic. Let me therefore suggest that you try a sausage ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

Words linked to "Acrostic" : puzzle, literary work, mystifier, puzzler