Acrostic
From Encyclopædia
{uh-kraws'-tik} An acrostic is formed when the words of a poem or other composition are so ordered that the first, last, or middle letters (sometimes syllables) of successive lines make a word or phrase when read vertically or diagonally. Acrostics are found in the Old Testament and were especially popular among the early Christians. Two of history's better-known examples are plays on the name
Jesus Christ. The initial Greek letters in the words making up the phrase "
Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" spell out "fish," a symbol with which Jesus and his followers were associated. A Latin verse was triply acrostic in spelling out Jesus, IESVS in Latin, with the center IESVS bisecting a horizontal IESVS to form a Greek
cross. Acrostics, motivated by the delight in wordplay, were also a characteristic feature of
Renaissance poetry in
Italy, France, and Elizabethan England.Acrostics is also the name of a word-building game. In this, a word of at least three letters is chosen by the players, who then write it vertically
Down the left side of a sheet of paper and also, with the letters reversed,
Down the right side. The object of the game is to fill in the space between the two
columns with the same
number of words as there are letters in the key word, starting and ending each new word with the letter at either side. The winner is either the first person to fill in all the words, or the player with the longest or most original words.
