List of forms of word play

rdf:langString List of forms of word play

rdf:langString This is a list of techniques used in word play. Techniques that involve the phonetic values of words * Engrish * Chinglish * Homonym: words with same sounds and same spellings but with different meanings * Homograph: words with same spellings but with different meanings * Homophone: words with same sounds but with different meanings * Homophonic translation * Mondegreen: a mishearing (usually unintentional) as a homophone or near-homophone that has as a result acquired a new meaning. The term is often used to refer specifically to mishearings of song lyrics (cf. soramimi). * Onomatopoeia: a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing * Phonetic reversal * Rhyme: a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words * Alliteration: matching consonants sounds at the beginning of words * Assonance: matching vowel sounds * Consonance: matching consonant sounds * Holorime: a rhyme that encompasses an entire line or phrase * Spoonerism: a switch of two sounds in two different words (cf. sananmuunnos) * Same-sounding words or phrases, fully or approximately homophonous (sometimes also referred to as "oronyms") Techniques that involve the letters * Acronym: abbreviations formed by combining the initial components in a phrase or names * : an acronym that is also a phrase pertaining to the original meaning * RAS syndrome: repetition of a word by using it both as a word alone and as a part of the acronym * Recursive acronym: an acronym that has the acronym itself as one of its components * Acrostic: a writing in which the first letter, syllable, or word of each line can be put together to spell out another message * Mesostic: a writing in which a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text * Word square: a series of letters arranged in the form of a square that can be read both vertically and horizontally * Backronym: a phrase back-formed by treating a word that is originally not an initialism or acronym as one * Replacement Backronym: a phrase back-formed from an existing initialism or acronym that is originally an abbreviation with another meaning * Anagram: rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase * Ambigram: a word which can be read just as well mirrored or upside down * Blanagram: rearranging the letters of a word or phrase and substituting one single letter to produce a new word or phrase * Letter bank: using the letters from a certain word or phrase as many times as wanted to produce a new word or phrase * Jumble: a kind of word game in which the solution of a puzzle is its anagram * Chronogram: a phrase or sentence in which some letters can be interpreted as numerals and rearranged to stand for a particular date * Gramogram: a word or sentence in which the names of the letters or numerals are used to represent the word * Lipogram: a writing in which certain letter is missing * Univocalic: a type of poetry that uses only one vowel * Palindrome: a word or phrase that reads the same in either direction * Pangram: a sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet at least once * Tautogram: a phrase or sentence in which every word starts with the same letter * Caesar shift: moving all the letters in a word or sentence some fixed number of positions down the alphabet Techniques that involve semantics and the choosing of words * Anglish: a writing using exclusively words of Germanic origin * Auto-antonym: a word that contains opposite meanings * Autogram: a sentence that provide an inventory of its own characters * Irony * Malapropism: incorrect usage of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning * Neologism: creating new words * Phono-semantic matching: camouflaged/pun borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word (related to folk etymology) * Portmanteau: a new word that fuses two words or morphemes * Retronym: creating a new word to denote an old object or concept whose original name has come to be used for something else * Oxymoron: a combination of two contradictory terms * Zeugma and Syllepsis: the use of a single phrase in two ways simultaneously * Pun: deliberately mixing two similar-sounding words * Slang: the use of informal words or expressions Techniques that involve the manipulation of the entire sentence or passage * Dog Latin * Language game: a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear * Pig Latin * Ubbi dubbi * Non sequiturs: a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement Techniques that involve the formation of a name * Ananym: a name with reversed letters of an existing name * Aptronym: a name that aptly represents a person or character * Charactonym: a name which suggests the personality traits of a fictional character * Eponym: applying a person's name to a place * Pseudonym: an artificial fictitious name, used as an alternative to one's legal name * Sobriquet: a popularized nickname Techniques that involves figure of speech * Conversion (word formation): a transformation of a word of one word class into another word class * Dysphemism: intentionally using a word or phrase with a harsher tone over one with a more polite tone * Euphemism: intentionally using a word or phrase with a more polite tone over one with a harsher tone * Kenning: circumlocution used in Old Norse and Icelandic poetry * Paraprosdokian: a sentence whose latter part is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first Others * Aleatory * Bushism * Constrained writing * Rebus * Interlanguages, Mixed languages and Macaronic languages * Sarcasm * Tmesis