Literally, what’s in a word?

We all know that a word is a unit of language or a brief utterance that conveys information. But what else is in a word? Well, sometimes lots of other words are hiding in there. That’s our mission this week. To find the words that hide in other words — sometimes in unusual ways. We know they’re in there, we just have to coax them out.

One of the best known ways in which words hide in other words is by means of the anagram — a word or phrase that contains all the letters of another word or phrase but in a different order. For example, “dynamo” is an anagram for “Monday,” and “dormitory” makes use of the same letters as “dirty room.” And if you ever find yourself having to defend your child from accusations of something that the little angle obviously didn’t do, you could give either a “parental statement” or a “paternal testament.”

At this point, you’re probably expecting me to come up with all sorts of variations of the humble anagram, and I’ll try not to disappoint.

First up is the alphagram, which, like the anagram, contains all the letters of another word but puts those letters in alphabetical order. Sometimes those alphabetical letters spell an actual word or words (the letters in “table” can be rearranged to spell “a belt”), and sometimes they don’t: The alphagram of “alphagram” is “aaaghlmpr.”

There are also self-alphagrams, which are words whose letters are already in alphabetical order, such as: Beefily, billowy and abhors.

A word whose meaning changes or remains the same after its letters have been rearranged is the ambigram. For instance, the letters in “Nuclear Regulatory Commission” can be moved around to make the statement, “Your rules clone atomic nightmares.” Or, if you have trouble remembering how to spell the name of a certain state in the upper Midwest, just remember that “Minnesota is not mean.” (Perhaps that one should be called a mnemonigram.)

An ambigram can also be a word whose meaning either changes or remains the same when viewed from different perspectives. Two examples of a rotational ambigram are: “dollop” and “swims.”

An antigram is an anagram of a word or words that’s the opposite of the original word or phrase. “Violence and “nice love” are two entirely different things but share the same letters, as do “united” and “untied.” (By the way, an antigram is not married to an unclegram as far as I know.)

The opposite of the antigram is the synanagram, in which the new word, such as “enraged” is synonymous with the original word, “angered.” Interestingly, the letters that make up the expression “twelve plus one” can be used to spell “eleven plus two,” each of which gives us the same unlucky sum.

Probably the most versatile member of the anagram family is the trianagram, which performs triple duty by spelling a trio of words using the same letters. Think about the time when everyone else leaves, but Marine airmen remain. And then there’s the lameness of the nameless salesman who lost lots in slot machines. (He really should have known better, since the anagram for “slot machines” is “cash lost in ’em”).

Finally, here’s a tip for medical students who find themselves struggling in anatomy class: Remember, it’s “bowel below elbow.”

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.”

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