What is an anagram?

How does an anagram work?

Anagrams are words or phrases that can be rearranged to make an entirely different word or phrase. For anagrams to work, both words or phrases must contain the same letters in the same quantity. A phrase can be an anagram of a word, and vice versa. For example, the words “gum” and “mug” are anagrams because they are both three-letter words and have the same letters (g, u, and m).

Let’s look at some more word pairings that are anagrams:

• “cork” and “rock”
• “lamp” and “palm”
• “note” and “tone”

Anagrams are not limited to single words and can also apply to longer phrases and sentences. Even complete sentences can be rearranged into words, though they may not always make sense. Here are some examples:

• “Are you alright” -> “authorial grey”
• “I ate the grape” -> “heritage tape”
• “Is that my pen” -> “this payment”

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Can words have more than one anagram?

Some words can have multiple anagrams. The number of anagrams for a word or phrase depends on the length and letters. Longer words and phrases with commonly used letters often have a greater number of possible anagrams. This is particularly true when the letters can form common prefixes or suffixes. A good example of a word with multiple anagrams is “slate”, which can be rearranged as “steal”, “least”, “stale”, “tales”, “teals”, and “tesla”.

Can anagrams be related to each other?

If you get extra creative with your anagram creations, some can be crafted to have a thematic connection, either through similar, opposing, or complementary meanings, like in this example:

• “A decimal point” -> “I’m a dot in place”

“A dot in place” is a loose definition of what a decimal point is, and both of these phrases have the same letters.

You can also make anagrams that have opposite meanings, like these phrases:

• “Young lad” -> “an old guy”

A young lad is the exact opposite of an old guy, but they somehow share the same letters.

We can also make anagrams complete each other or form a sentence together. Here’s an example of how that can work:

• “I spared” -> “a spider”

When you put “I spared” and “a spider” next to each other, they create a complete thought.

Anagrams and other forms of wordplay

Anagrams can be a fun and creative way to explore the structure of words and phrases. If you enjoy creating and unscrambling anagrams, you might also like exploring other forms of wordplay. Palindromes are similar to anagrams, but they don’t require any scrambling. The letters in a palindrome are arranged in a way that they can be read the same forward and backward (like “level” and “toot”).

Another type of wordplay that is fun to play around with is a backronym, which is an existing word that gets turned into an acronym. Like with anagrams, creating backronyms require lots of thinking and allow us to reimagine the way we view words.

Get creative with your writing

Writing isn’t all about grammar and punctuation. Playing around with language and exploring the many ways we can restructure words are just a few of the ways we can grow and become more versatile as writers. Browse through our writing tips to find new ways to have fun with wordplays.