The first word game: Anagrams, pt 1

From Wikipedia:
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place. Someone who creates anagrams is called an anagrammatist.

The original word or phrase is known as the subject of the anagram. Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram. However, the goal of serious or skilled anagrammatists is to produce anagrams that in some way reflect or comment on the subject. Such an anagram may be a synonym or antonym of its subject, a parody, a criticism, or praise;
e.g.
George Bush = He bugs Gore;
Madonna Louise Ciccone = Occasional nude income or One cool dance musician;
William Shakespeare = I am a weakish speller,
Roger Meddows-Taylor = Great words or melody.

The creation of anagrams assumes an alphabet, the symbols of which are to be permuted. In a perfect anagram, every letter must be used, with exactly the same number of occurrences as in the anagrammed word or phrase; any result that falls short is called an imperfect anagram. Diacritics are usually disregarded (this is usually not relevant for English anagrams), and standard orthography (spelling) is to be used.

HistoryAnagrams can be traced back to the time of Moses, as "Themuru" or changing, which was to find the hidden and mystical meaning in names.[2] They were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, for example with the poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut,[3] They are said to go back at least to the Greek poet Lycophron, in the third century BCE;[4] but this relies on an account of Lycophron given by John Tzetzes in the 12th century.

Anagrams in Latin were considered witty over many centuries. "Est vir qui adest", [explained in my next post), was cited as the example in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language.

Any historical material on anagrams must always be interpreted in terms of the assumptions and spellings that were current for the language in question. In particular spelling in English only slowly became fixed. There were attempts to regulate anagram formation, an important one in English being that of George Puttenham's "Of the Anagram" or "Posy Transposed" in The Art of English Poesie (1589).