Gramogram
A gramogram, grammagram, or letteral word is a letter or group of letters which can be pronounced to form one or more words, as in "CU" for "see you".[1][2][3] They are a subset of rebuses, and are commonly used as abbreviations.
They are sometimes used as a component of cryptic crossword clues.[1][4]
In arts and culture
[edit | edit source]A poem reportedly appeared in the Woman's Home Companion of July 1903 using many gramograms: it was preceded by the line "ICQ out so that I can CU have fun translating the sound FX of this poem".[2]
The Marcel Duchamp "readymade" L.H.O.O.Q. is an example of a gramogram. Those letters, pronounced in French, sound like "Elle a chaud au cul", an idiom which translates to "she has a hot ass",[5] or in Duchamp's words "there is fire down below".
The William Steig books CDB! (1968) and CDC? (1984) use letters in the place of words.[6] Steig has been credited as being a founder of this literary technique.[7][8]
The suicide prevention charity R U OK?'s name is a gramogram, with supporters encouraged to text "R U OK?" to friends and family to see how that person's mental health is going.
A short gramogram dialogue opening with a customer asking "FUNEX" ("Have you any eggs?") appears in a 1949 book Hail fellow well met by Seymour Hicks[9] and was expanded into a longer sketch of phrasebook-style gramogram dialogue for the comedy sketch show The Two Ronnies, under the title Swedish made simple.[10][11]
The 1980s Canadian gameshow Bumper Stumpers required contestants to decode gramograms presented as fictional vanity licence plates.
Here Come the ABCs, a 2005 children's album by They Might Be Giants, contains the song "I C U", which is entirely made up of gramograms.
See also
[edit | edit source]- Logogram – Grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme
- Rebus – Allusional device that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words
- SMS language – Abbreviated slang used in text messaging
References
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- ^ Anne Collins Goodyear, James W. McManus, National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2009, contributors Janine A. Mileaf, Francis M. Naumann, Michael R. Taylor, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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