different between acrostic vs initials

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French acrostiche, acrostique (“acrostic”) (modern French acrostiche), and its etymon Late Latin acrostichis, from Ancient Greek ?????????? (akrostikhís), from ????- (ákro-, prefix indicating, among other things, the extremity or tip of something) + ??????? (stíkhos, “row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steyg?- (“to climb, go”)).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??k??st?k/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /??k??st?k/
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA^(key): /??k??st?k/
• Rhymes: -?st?k, -??st?k
• Hyphenation: acros?tic

Noun

acrostic (plural acrostics) (also attributively)

1. A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message. [from 16th c.]
2. A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.
3. A kind of word puzzle, the solution of which forms an anagram of a quotation, and their initials often forming the name of its author.

Alternative forms

• acrostick, acrosticke (obsolete)

Hyponyms

• telestich
• word square

Derived terms

• double acrostic
• triple acrostic

Descendants

• ? Irish: acrastach

Translations

Adjective

acrostic (comparative more acrostic, superlative most acrostic)

1. Of or pertaining to acrostics.
   • 1998, Deborah J. Bennett, Randomness, Harvard University Press, p. 42

     Other ancients have suggested that the original verses were written in hieroglyphs and also mentioned the acrostic code.

Alternative forms

• acrostick, acrosticke (obsolete)

Translations

References

Further reading

• acrostic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• acrostic (puzzle) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Racicots, Ritaccos, Socratic, sarcotic

English

Noun

initials

1. plural of initial

Noun

initials pl (plural only)

1. An abbreviation of a person's name, constructed by taking the initial letters of first, last, and sometimes middle name(s). See monogram

Translations