acrostich

Noun

acrostic (plural acrostics)

1. (also, attributive) A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.
   • He [Judas Maccabeus] was termed Mackabæus, becauſe he carried in his ſtandard, or vexillum militare, theſe four Hebrew letters, Mem, Chaph, Beth, and Jod, or M. C. B. and J. whereunto their points being added, which are their vowells, (for others they have none) his mott was Mackabai, whereof he...1600 December 7, Abraham Hartwell, “Nº LXXXV. Of the Same [i.e., Of the Antiquity, Variety, and Reason of Motts, with Arms of Noblemen and Gentlemen in England].”, in Thomas Hearne, editor, A...
2. (also, attributive) A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.
   • The Whole [of the Book of Zephaniah] is wrote in a very lively, tender, and pathetic Stile; and all the Chapters, except the laſt, (which ſeems to have been of later Compoſition than the reſt) are in Acroſtick Verſe, i.e. every Line, or Couplet, begins, in an Alphabetical Order, with ſome Letter in...1744, Thomas Stackhouse, “From the Death of Josiah to the Babylonish Captivity”, in A New History of the Holy Bible, from the Beginning of the World, to the Establishment of Christianity. […], 2nd...
3. (also, attributive) A kind of word puzzle, whose solution forms an anagram of a quotation, with its initial letters often forming the name of the person quoted.
   • those who rack their brains in solving the Acrostics in our Sunday papers will, perchance, be saved many a rack and many a failure by our reverse alphabetical arrangement1924, Lawrence H. Dawson, “Preface”, in John Walker, The Rhyming Dictionary of The English Language, London / New York: George Routledge and Sons / E. P. Dutton and Co., page vi
4. (also, attributive) A kind of word puzzle in which a series of words are clued, and individual letters from the clued word spell out one or more additional words.

See all 5 meanings of acrostic