List of forms of word play

This is a list of techniques used in word play with Wikipedia articles.

Technique that involve the "phonetic values" of words

* Mondegreen: a mishearing (usually unintentional) of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone that has as a result acquired a new meaning. The term is often used to refer specifically to mishearings of song lyrics.
* Onomatopoeia: a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing
* Rhyme: a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words
** Alliteration: matching sounds at the beginning of words
** Assonance: matching vowels
** Consonance: matching consonants
** Holorime: a rhyme that encompasses an entire line or phrase
* Spoonerism: a switch of two sounds in two different words

Techniques that involve the "letters"

* Acronym: abbreviations formed by combining the initial components in a phrase or name
** RAS syndrome: repetition of a word by using it both as a word alone and as a part of the acronym
** Recursive acronym: an acronym that has the acronym itself as one of its components
* Acrostic: a writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line can be put together to spell out another message
** Mesostic: a writing in which a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text
** Word square: a series of letters arranged in the form of a square that could be read both vertically and horizontally
* Backronym: a phrase back-formed by treating a word that is originally not an initialism or acronym as one
** Replacement backronym: a phrase back-formed from an existing initialism or acronym that is originally an abbreviation with another meaning
** Apronym: a backronym in which the word itself is relevant to the associated phrase
* Anagram: rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase
** Ambigram: a graphical figure that depicts a word in two or more directions
** Blanagram: rearranging the letters of a word or phrase and substituting one single letter to produce a new word or phrase
** Letter bank: using the letters from a certain word or phrase as many times as wanted to produce a new word or phrase
** Jumble: a kind of word game in which the solution of a puzzle is its anagram
* Chronogram: a phrase or sentence in which some letters can be interpreted as numerals and rearranged to stand for a particular date
* Lipogram: a writing in which certain letter is missing
** Univocalic: a type of poetry that uses only one vowel
* Palindrome: a word or phrase that reads the same in either direction
* Pangram: a sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet at least once

Techniques that involve "semantics" and the "choosing of words"

* Anglish: a writing using exclusively words of Germanic origin
* Auto-antonym: a word that contains opposite meanings
* Autogram: a sentence that describes itself
* Malapropism: incorrect usage of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning
* Neologism: creating new words
** Portmanteau: a new word that fuses two words or morphemes
** Retronym: creating a new word to denote an old object or concept whose original name has come to be used for something else
* Oxymoron: a combination of two contradictory terms
* Pun: deliberately mixing two similar-sounding words
* Slang: the use of informal words or expressions

Techniques that involve the manipulation of "the entire sentence or passage"

* Dog Latin
* Language game: a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear
** Pig Latin
** Ubbi dubbi

Techniques that involve the "formation of a name"

* Ananym: a name with reversed letters of an existing name
* Aptronym: a name that aptly represents a fictional character
* Charactonym: a name which suggests the personality traits of a fictional character
* Eponym: applying a person's name to a place
* Pseudonym: an artificial fictitious name, used as an alternative to one's legal name
* Sobriquet: a popularized nickname

Techniques that involves "figure of speech"

* Dysphemism: intentionally using a word or phrase with a harsher tone over one with a more polite tone
* Euphemism: intentionally using a word or phrase with a more polite tone over one with a harsher tone
* Kenning: circumlocution used in Old Norse and Icelandic poetry
* Paraprosdokian: a sentence whose latter part is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first
* Verbification: a kind of derivation that turns words of other parts of speech into verbs

Others

* Aleatory
* Analytic philosophy
* Bushism
* Constrained writing
* Engrish
* Homonym: words with same sounds and same spellings but with different meanings
* Homograph: words with same spellings but with different meanings
* Homophone: words with same sounds but with different meanings
* Phonetic reversal
* Rebus
* Spanglish

ee also

* Figure of speech
* Logology
* Word game
* Word play
* Wit