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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

acrostic.

A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/əˈkɹɒstɪk/Received-Pronunciation/əˈkɹɔstɪk/General-American/əˈkɹɑstɪk/cot-caught-merger
  1. A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.

    also · attributive
  2. A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.

    also · attributive
  3. 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.

    also · attributive
  4. 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.

    also · attributive
Where this word comes from

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

adj/əˈkɹɒstɪk/Received-Pronunciation/əˈkɹɔstɪk/General-American/əˈkɹɑstɪk/cot-caught-merger
  1. Of or pertaining to acrostics.

    also · attributive
Where this word comes from

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

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acrostic studioacrostic workshello, acrostic

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.