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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
327 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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acrostic
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synonyms: telestich, telesticon ???
tags: [rare]
► definition
Definition:a poem or other literary work that contains a simple encoded message by the author, usually the first letters of the work spell out a message
► uses
Uses:
Mary and Lily—how sweet are those names,
Allied as they are to my heart and my home;
Recalling with freshness the days that are past,
Yielding buds of sweet promise for days yet to come.
Links are these names to the chain that hath bound
In fetters my heart, to which still they lay claim;
Loved ones and lovely, still close by me found,
Years past, and time present, whose names are the same.
Enshrined in this bosom, is living one now,
Still youthful and truthful, and talented too,
Though years have elapsed since she passed from our view;
E’en in Summer midst roses in beauty and bloom,
She faded away, and was borne to the tomb.
Weston. For my Grand-Daughters, M. and L.—an Acrostic (March 5, 1852)
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The Amorosa Visione, written about the same time, is not only an allegory but an acrostic, the initial letters of its fifteen hundred triplets composing two sonnets and a ballade in honour of Fiammetta, whom he here for once ventures to call by her true name.
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“When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N, shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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Leopold Bloom Ellpodbomool Molldopeloob Bollopedoom Old Ollebo, M. P.
What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic poet) sent to Miss Marion (Molly) Tweedy on the 14 February 1888?
James Joyce. Ulysses
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