List of forms of wordplay


This is a list of techniques used in wordplay.
Techniques that involve the phonetic values of words
Techniques that involve the letters
  • Acronym: abbreviations formed by combining the initial components in a phrase or names
  • Anadrome: a word or phrase that reads as a different word or phrase in reverse
  • Apronym: an acronym that is also a phrase pertaining to the original meaning
  • * RAS syndrome: repetition of a word by using it both as a word alone and as a part of the acronym
  • * Recursive acronym: an acronym that has the acronym itself as one of its components
  • Acrostic: a writing in which the first letter, syllable, or word of each line can be put together to spell out another message
  • * Mesostic: a writing in which a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text
  • * Word square: a series of letters arranged in the form of a square that can be read both vertically and horizontally
  • Backronym: a phrase back-formed by treating a word that is originally not an initialism or acronym as one
  • * Replacement Backronym: a phrase back-formed from an existing initialism or acronym that is originally an abbreviation with another meaning
  • Anagram: rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase
  • * Ambigram: a word which can be read just as well mirrored or upside down
  • * Blanagram: rearranging the letters of a word or phrase and substituting one single letter to produce a new word or phrase
  • * Letter bank: using the letters from a certain word or phrase as many times as wanted to produce a new word or phrase
  • * Jumble: a kind of word game in which the solution of a puzzle is its anagram
  • Chronogram: a phrase or sentence in which some letters can be interpreted as numerals and rearranged to stand for a particular date
  • Gramogram: a word or sentence in which the names of the letters or numerals are used to represent the word
  • Lipogram: a writing in which certain letter is missing
  • * Univocalic: a type of poetry that uses only one vowel
  • Palindrome: a word or phrase that reads the same in either direction
  • Pangram: a sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet at least once
  • Tautogram: a phrase or sentence in which every word starts with the same letter
  • Caesar shift: moving all the letters in a word or sentence some fixed number of positions down the alphabet
Techniques that involve semantics and the choosing of words
  • Anglish: a writing using exclusively words of Germanic origin
  • Auto-antonym: a word that contains opposite meanings
  • Autogram: a sentence that provides an inventory of its own characters
  • Irony
  • Malapropism: incorrect usage of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with a different meaning
  • Neologism: creating new words
  • * Phono-semantic matching: camouflaged/pun borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word
  • * Portmanteau: a new word that fuses two words or morphemes
  • * Retronym: creating a new word to denote an old object or concept whose original name has come to be used for something else
  • Oxymoron: a combination of two contradictory terms
  • Zeugma and Syllepsis: the use of a single phrase in two ways simultaneously
  • Pun: deliberately mixing two similar-sounding words
  • Slang: the use of informal words or expressions
Techniques that involve the manipulation of the entire sentence or passage
Techniques that involve the formation of a name
Techniques that involves figure of speech
Others