acrostic

Meanings

1. A poem or other text in which certain letters, often the first in each line, spell out a name or message.
2. A poem in Hebrew in which successive lines or verses start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.
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.
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.

1. Of or pertaining to acrostics.

Etymology

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”)).