Nuts and Bolts: antilipos or transgrams.

First of all, antilipos isn't Greek, so you don't have to say it an-TEE-lipposs.

Well, that's a relief.

An antilipo (ANteeLIE-po. The LIE bit can be pronounced either like, well, lie, or like the beginning of lip) is the opposite of a lipogram, which is a piece of writing which misses out a particular letter. 

I've never known why anyone should wish to do this, but, hey, there it is.

An antilipo, or reverse lipogram, or transgram, is a piece of writing where every word has to contain a particular letter.

A meta-transgram is an explanation of what a transgram is, written in the form of a transgram. 

Heaven help us all.

My immediate reaction to all this is that some people need to get out more, but after trawling the internet I've failed to discover a single example of an antilipo, so it seems after all that almost no one has ever been bored enough to construct one.

It's good to know, too, that there is a limit to how much people are prepare to torture themselves.

One last point: if no one has ever made an antilipo, can it be said to be a literary term? (Well, don't ask me.) But assuming that a meta-transgram has to include the words letter and word, then all the words in a transgram would have to include the letter R, won't they. 

If it was in English.

I'll tell you what, let's devote a couple of minutes to an attempt at a meta-transgram.

Meta-transgram: interpretative self-referential literary work describing meta-transgrams, every word therefore featuring particular letters (or letter) nearly certainly R.

Improvements welcome!


Word To Use Today: antilipo. Anti is Greek for against, and lipo is from the Greek lipein to omit.