Rebus and Grammagram

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eleanor. I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Eleanor. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Eleanor. What’s up?

Hi. Well, I have a question about something I first remember hearing in a song.

The song is called Soul Sister by the band Train.

And the line that always intrigued me was,

I just want to see you be with me.

And especially the part where they say, see you be.

I know that he’s saying, I just want to see us together, but it always makes me think that he’s spelling out the word cub.

And I was wondering if there was a name for this kind of thing where words sound like letters or letters sound like words.

I have a couple other ones, too.

Oh, let’s hear them.

Yeah, like I-N-V-U could spell with the letters I-N-V-U.

Oh, okay.

Or like U-R-A-Q-T, which is a little bit old.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, there are a couple of different words for this kind of wordplay.

The traditional one is rebus, R-E-B-U-S.

You may have seen that when you were in elementary school.

Often that involves a drawing or a picture of something, right?

The insect, the bee, standing for the letter B.

Yeah, maybe 2B.

A picture of the I, E-Y-E, standing for the letter I.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay, yeah.

2B or not 2B, something like that.

But it’s all rebus, even if the letter is standing in for the whole word, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And the word rebus comes from a Latin word that means by means of objects.

So in the case of what you’re talking about, letters or numbers work.

Another term for this, and you can find a ton of these examples online, is if you Google the word Grammagram, G-R-A-M-M-A-G-R-A-M, Grammagram, you can find lots and lots of these.

And you know what I would recommend you do is go to YouTube and find the video of The Two Ronnies.

The Two what?

It’s a comedy duo from Britain called The Two Ronnies, and they have this little routine that starts out F-U-N-E-X.

And the situation there is that a guy goes into a little breakfast place and asks the waiter, F-U-N-E-X?

Meaning, have you any eggs?

Oh.

And the waiter says, S-V-F-X.

And it goes on and on and on like that.

Yes, we have eggs.

That’s great.

Yeah, and then the guy who’s ordering his breakfast says,

Are you BC?

Are you busy?

Maybe it’s a lot funnier when you watch the video.

No, it sounds funny. I’ll definitely look that up.

Yeah, and the other thing that I would recommend you do is look up some books by William Steig, S-T-E-I-G, William Steig.

He’s got one book called CDB, which shows a picture of somebody pointing out a bee on a flower,

And another one called CDC, which is telling somebody to look at the ocean.

And you’ll find lots and lots and lots of these examples.

And in the meantime, I want to thank you for that earworm from Hey Soul Sister.

Oh, yeah. No problem.

Thanks for those tips. I’ll definitely look those up.

All right.

Well, we’re glad to help.

Thanks, Eleanor.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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