Instant-messaging app ICQ is a gramogram for "I seek you".

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

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

  • 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

  1. 1 2 "Cryptic crossword reference lists > Gramograms". Highlight Press. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
  2. 1 2 "Grammagrams". Audrey Deal. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
  3. ↑ "Grammagrams". Wordnik. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  4. ↑ Caitlin Lovinger (29 February 2020). "Letter Dictation". New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
  5. ↑ 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, ISBN 0262013002
  6. ↑ Sarah Boxer (5 October 2003). "William Steig, 95, Dies; Tough Youths and Jealous Satyrs Scowled in His Cartoons". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  7. ↑ Joana Avillez; Molly Young (2018). D C-T!. Penguin Publishing Group. p. 3. ISBN 9780525558057.
  8. ↑ Meghan Cox Gurdon (29 June 2012). "The Surprising Fun of Visual Puns". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  9. ↑ Hicks, Sir Seymour (1949). Hail Fellow Well Met. Staples Press. p. 183. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  10. ↑ Brennan, Ailis (31 March 2016). "Ronnie Corbett dies: Here are his funniest seven sketches". GQ. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  11. ↑ "Ronnie Corbett Christmas return: Puns upon a time". BBC News. 24 December 2010. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
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