Term of Art: Anagram

“Anagram: (Greek ‘writing back or anew’) The letters of a word or phrase are transposed to form a new word. For instance, the word ‘Stanhope’ can be turned into the word ‘phaetons.’ A common feature of crosswords. Samuel Butler’s title Erewhon is an anagram of  ‘nowhere.'”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.