Forms: 6–9 logogryphe, 7–9 -iphe, 9 -iff, 7– logogriph. [ad. F. logogriphe, f. Gr. λόγο-ς word + γρῖφος fishing-basket, riddle.] A kind of enigma, in which a certain word, and other words that can be formed out of all or any of its letters, are to be guessed from synonyms of them introduced into a set of verses. Occasionally used for: Any anagram or puzzle involving anagrams.
1597–8. Bp. Hall, Sat., IV. i. 33. Worse than the Logogryphes of later times, Or Hundreth Riddles shak’t to sleeue-lesse rimes.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Underwoods, Execr. upon Vulcan, 34 (1640), B i b. Had I … weav’d fifty tomes Of Logogriphes, or curious Pallindromes.
1765. H. Walpole, Lett. to Lady Hervey, 21 Nov. Lett. (1857), IV. 439. All I can send your ladyship is a very pretty logogriphe, made by … Madame du Deffand.
1770. Fox, in J. H. Jesse, G. Selwyn & Contemp. (1843), II. 398. I gained great credit there by guessing a logogryphe.
1813. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XXXVI. 417. A logogriph … describes not a word only, but all the included words, which any portion of its letters can spell.
1835. Tait’s Mag., II. 808. A sort of logogriff not worthy of solution.
1867–77. G. F. Chambers, Astron., I. xii. 136. The original discovery was announced to Kepler in the following logogriph.
1884. J. Payne, 1001 Nts., VII. 210, note. The clue to this logogriph lies in the numerical value of the letters forming the key-word.
Hence Logogriphic a., of or pertaining to logogriphs, of the nature of a logogriph.
1814. Q. Rev., X. 464. By dropping r [from Borlase], and changing ase into us, we have the ingenious logogriphic title of Sir Bolus.
