abstemious word

a word lacking the five vowels, AEIOU. The word abstemious ( meaning “temperate” ) was chosen because it contains the five vowels in alphabetical order.

Example : GYPSY NYMPH PYGMY SLYLY RHYTHM

 

acronym

a word formed from the first ( or first few ) letters of several related items (e.g. RADAR, SONAR, ANZAC).

 

adjacent pronoun speller

a word with strings of consecutive letters that spell a large number of different pronouns.

Example
The letters in USHERS can spell five:

USHERS    ->    US    /     SHE    /    HE    /    HER    /    HERS

 

aeiou word

a word in which the five major vowels appear one each in any order.

Example: DIALOGUE    EQUATION     SEQUOIA

 

alphabetic value

the number signifying a letter’s position in the alphabet.

Examples : A = 1, B = 2, … Z = 26.

 

anagram

a word of words formed by rearranging the letters of another word or words related in meaning.

Example: OCEAN = CANOE.

 

bigram

a pair of letters considered as a single unit.

Example: HN, BP, MR, ET.

 

charade

a word of words formed by redividing but not rearranging the letters of another word or words.

Example: DOGMA – DOG MA.

 

cybersquatting

(also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

 

domain name

noun

a series of alphanumeric strings separated by periods, such as www.highnames.com, serving as an address for a computer network connection and identifying the owner of the address. The last three letters in a domain name indicate what type of organization owns the address: for instance, .com stands for commercial, .edu for educational, and .org for nonprofit.

 

ladder

a series of three or more words formed by making a specific change in each word to generate the next word, as in this case each word has one letter replaced with another to form the next word.

Example: DAWN-DARN-DARK-MARK-MURK-MUSK-DUSK

 

onomastic |ˌänəˈmastik|

adjective

of or relating to the study of the history and origin of proper names.

ORIGIN late 16th cent. (as a noun in the sense [alphabetical list of proper nouns,] later also [lexicographer] ): from Greek onomastikos, from onoma ‘name.’ The adjective dates from the early 18th cent.

 

onomatopoeia

noun

a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.

ORIGIN from the Greek ὀνοματοποιία; ὄνομα for “name” and ποιέω for “I make”

Example: tick tock (the sounds of a clock), purr (the noise of a cat), ribbit (the sounds that the frog makes)

 

palindrome

a word of words that read the same in both directions.

Example: LEVEL

 

pangram

a sentence or other text that contains all the letters of the alphabet one or more times.

Example: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

 

portmanteau

also called portmanteau

word, a combination of two (or more) words or morphemes and their definitions and meanings into one new word.

Examples:

Wikipedia = wiki (a type of collaborative website, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning “quick”) + encyclopedia.

Smog = smoke + fog

 

pun

a word or phrase that has two meanings, one of which makes the text humorous.

 

rebus

the representation of words by means of letters, numbers, or other symbols that are interpreted by their sound, placement on the page, et cetera.

Examples: XPDNC = EXPEDIENCY, 10S = TENNIS

 

reversal

a word formed by spelling another word in reverse.

Example: SLEEP-PEELS

 

transcription

the systematic representation of speech in written form, i.e. writing on how to pronounce the words

Example: the Greek word Ελληνική is transcripted as Eliniki

transliteration

conversion of a text from one script to another (Greek to Latin, Cyrillic to Chinese etc.)

Example: the Greek word Ελληνική is transliterated as Hellēnikē 

Greek word	Transliteration	Transcription	English translation
Ελληνική Δημοκρατία	Hellēnikē Dēmokratia	Eliniki Dhimokratia	Hellenic Republic

 

transposal

the same as an ANAGRAM,  but the words in a transposal don’t have to relate in meaning.

 

trigram

a set of three letters considered as a single unit.

Examples: ABC, HKX, TOM, VVV