Synanagrams: Synonymous Anagrams

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. I learned a new word the other day from the Haggard Hawks Twitter feed written by Paul Anthony Jones, and the word is synanogram. Do you know this term?

Synanogram. Nope.

Mm-It means a synonymous anagram. So, for example, the word angered can be anagrammed into the word enraged.

Oh, nice.

They mean the same thing, right?

Oh, that’s good.

Right?

And you as a dictionary editor, Grant, you may see some shades of differences that don’t make them exact. I’m willing because the idea is so clever. I’m willing to give it a little bit of leeway.

Okay.

So you would be okay with statement and testament?

Sure.

And laudation, meaning praise and adulation.

And one that I really like is that you can write out the words 12 plus 1, and you can also write out the words 11 plus 2, and you can anagram them.

They’re both anagrams.

And they both equal 13.

Nice.

How crazy is that?

That’s a very good one.

So the word again is synanagram.

Synanagram.

So these are anagrams that have the same meaning as each other.

Yes.

So it’s the same one word, anagram.

Mix the letters.

And the original word and the new word mean the same thing, roughly.

Yeah.

That’s cool.

Maybe you can come up with some of your own synanograms.

Let us know.

We’ll talk about them on the air.

Send them to words@waywordradio.org.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or share them on Twitter @wayword.