A rebus-style "escort card" from around 1865, to be read as "May I see you home my dear?"A German rebus, circa 1620
Arebus (/ˈriːbəs/REE-bəss) is apuzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example, the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+) and the letter "n".
It was a favourite form ofheraldic expression used in theMiddle Ages to denote surnames. For example, in its basic form, threesalmon (fish) are used to denote the surname "Salmon". A more sophisticated example was the rebus of BishopWalter Lyhart (d. 1472) of Norwich, consisting of astag (orhart) lying down in a conventional representation of water. The composition alludes to the name, profession or personal characteristics of the bearer, and speaks to the beholderNon verbis, sed rebus, whichLatin expression signifies "not by words but by things"[1] (res, rei (f), a thing, object, matter;rebus beingablative plural).[2]
Rebuses are used extensively as a form of heraldic expression as a hint to the name of the bearer; they are not synonymous withcanting arms. A man might have a rebus as a personal identification device entirely separate from his armorials, canting or otherwise. For example,Sir Richard Weston (d. 1541) bore as arms:Ermine, on a chief azure fivebezants, whilst his rebus, displayed many times in terracotta plaques on the walls of his mansionSutton Place, Surrey, was a "tun" or barrel, used to designate the last syllable of his surname.
An example of canting arms proper are those of theBorough of Congleton in Cheshire consisting of aconger eel, a lion (in Latin,leo) and a tun (barrel). This word sequence "conger-leo-tun" enunciates the town's name. Similarly, the coat of arms ofSt. Ignatius Loyola contains wolves (in Spanish,lobo) and a kettle (olla), said by some (probably incorrectly) to be a rebus for "Loyola". The arms ofElizabeth Bowes-Lyon featurebows and lions.
A modern example of the rebus used as a form ofword play is:
H + =Hear, orHere.
By extension, it also uses the positioning of words or parts of words in relation to each other to convey a hidden meaning, for example:
p walk ark: walk in the park.
A rebus made up solely of letters (such as "CU" for "See you") is known as agramogram, grammagram, or letteral word. This concept is sometimes extended to include numbers and other Unicode characters (as in "Q8" for "Kuwait", "8" for "ate", "omỽa" for "omega" or "Ỽ" for "egg").[3] Rebuses are sometimes used incrossword puzzles, with multiple letters or a symbol fitting into a single square.[4]
Asinternet slang, Rebus is the use of acharacter to represent a word or ahomoglyph to think you are using a letter with the same glyph in the font. Examples include "Ỽ", Latin letterV in the shape of an egg in theMiddle Welsh language and "ꙮ", Cyrillic letter Multiocular O shaped like grapes.
The termrebus also refers to the use of apictogram oremoji to represent a syllabic sound. This adapts pictograms and emojis intophonograms. A precursor to the development of the alphabet, this process represents one of the most important developments of writing. Fully developedhieroglyphs read in rebus fashion were in use atAbydos in Egypt as early as 3400 BCE.[5] In Mesopotamia, the principle was first employed onProto-Cuneiform tablets, beginning in theJemdet Nasr period (c. 3100–2900 BC).[6][7]
The writing of correspondence in rebus form became popular in the eighteenth century and continued into the nineteenth century.Lewis Carroll wrote the children he befriended picture-puzzle rebus letters, nonsense letters, andlooking-glass letters, which had to be held in front of a mirror to be read.[8] Rebus letters served either as a sort ofcode or simply as apastime.
Inlinguistics, therebus principle is the use of existing symbols, such as Emojis, letters, & pictograms, purely for their sounds or looks regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. Many ancient writing systems used what is now considered 'the rebus principle' to represent abstract words, which otherwise would be hard to represent with pictograms. An example that illustrates the Rebus principle is the representation of the sentence "I can see you" by using the characters of ⊙⎄CU (TheXNOR gate symbol looking like an eye and thecompose key symbol looking like a tin can) or the pictographs of "eye—can—sea—ewe".
Some linguists believe that the Chinese developed their writing system according to the rebus principle,[9] and Egyptian hieroglyphs sometimes used a similar system. A famous rebus statue ofRamses II uses three hieroglyphs to compose his name:Horus (asRa), forRa; the child,mes; and the sedge plant (stalk held in left hand),su; the name Ra-mes-su is then formed.[10]
Catchphrase is a long-running game show which requires contestants to decipher a rebus. The show began as a short-livedAmerican game show hosted byArt James before being seen in the United Kingdom from 1986 to 2004 and returning in 2013. There was also anAustralian version of the show hosted byJohn Burgess.
In 1998, Granada TV producedWaffle, a single word rebus puzzle show that was hosted by Nick Weir, and included premium telephone line viewer participation.
United States
Rebuses were central to the television game showConcentration. Contestants had to solve a rebus, usually partially concealed behind any of thirty numbered "squares", to win a game. An updated version, known asClassic Concentration, shrank the board to twenty-five squares. There were also British and Australian versions of the game.
TheHBO children's game seriesCrashbox features three rebus puzzles in the game segment "Ten Seconds."
A short-lived ABC game show from 1965 known asThe Rebus Game also involved contestants creating rebuses to communicate an answer.
TheNickelodeon game showGet the Picture features a Power Surge called "Rebus Mania", in which the teams had 30 seconds to guess the rebus that was shown.
The word "rebus" has also come to denote unconventional crossword answers requiring numerals, multiple letters in a single square, or other variations from the customary one-letter-one-square format.[11] The answers do not necessarily involve true rebuses in the traditional sense.
It is reported[13] that whenVoltaire was the guest ofFrederick the Great atSanssouci Palace, they exchanged puzzle notes. Frederick sent over a page with two picture blocks on it: two hands below the letter P, and then the number 100 below a picture of a handsaw, all followed by a question mark. Voltaire replied with:Ga!
Both messages were rebuses in the French language:deux mains sous Pé à cent sous scie? "two hands under 'p' at [one] hundred under saw" =demain souper à Sanssouci? "supper tomorrow at Sanssouci?"); reply:Gé grand, A petit! "big 'G', small 'a'!" (=j'ai grand appétit! "I am very hungry!").
The early sixteenth-centuryBishop of Exeter,Hugh Oldham, adopted the owl as his personal device. It bore a scroll in its beak bearing the letters D.O.M., forming a rebus based on his surname, which would probably have been pronounced at the time asowl-dom.[14]
The nineteenth-century French sculptorJean-Pierre Dantan would place rebuses on thesocles of his caricature busts to identify the subject. For example,Victor Hugo was an axe (hache in French, which sounds like the French pronunciation of "H") + UG + crossed bones (os, sounding like "O").Hector Berlioz was represented by the letters BER low on the socle, with a bed (lit, for "li") comparatively high on the socle (to mean "haut", the French for high, pronounced with a silent "h" and "t" and the digraph "au" sounding like "O").[15]
Rebus Bibles such asA Curious Hieroglyphic Bible were popular in the late eighteenth century for teaching children to read the Bible.[16]
Franciscans interacting withNahuatl-speaking groups found that the Cholultecans used rebus principles to record information in Latin. The Cholultecans learned the Pater Noster or Lord's Prayer with the aid of drawing pictures of apantli (flag or banner) to representpater and a picture of a prickly pear,nochtli, fornoster. This practice was seen as a strength of the people's pictographic literacy.[17]
A bottle ofYamato Shizuku (やまと しずく; Japan droplet) sake (name spelt out at top right), with a rebus ∧ト💧 which is read asyama (山; mountain) (symbolized by the ∧) +to (ト; katakana character forto) +shizuku (雫; droplet) (symbolized by the 💧)
In Japan, the rebus known ashanjimono (判じ物)[18] was immensely popular during theEdo period.[19] A piece byukiyo-e artistKunisada was "Actor Puzzles" (Yakusha hanjimono) that featured rebuses.[20]
Today the most often seen of these symbols is a picture of a sickle, a circle, and the letternu (ぬ), read askama-wa-nu (鎌輪ぬ; sickle circlenu), interpreted askamawanu (構わぬ), the old-fashioned form ofkamawanai (構わない; don't worry, doesn't matter). This is known as thekamawanu-mon (鎌輪奴文; kamawanu sign), and dates to circa 1700,[21] being used in kabuki since circa 1815.[22][23]
Kabuki actors would wearyukata and other clothing whose pictorial design, in rebus, represented theirYagō "guild names", and would distributetenugui cloth with their rebused names as well. The practice was not restricted to the acting profession and was undertaken by townsfolk of various walks of life. There were also pictorial calendars calledegoyomi that represented theJapanese calendar in rebus so it could be "read" by the illiterate.
Today a number of abstract examples following certain conventions are occasionally used for names, primarily for corporatelogos or product logos and incorporating some characters of the name, as in amonogram; seeJapanese rebus monogram. The most familiar example globally is the logo forYamasa soy sauce, which is a ∧ with a サ under it. This is read asYama, foryama (山; mountain) (symbolized by the ∧) +sa (サ; katakana character forsa).
A rebus for the names of Japanese provinces, from around 1800
^Izzard, Sebastian; Rimer, J. Thomas; Carpenter, John T. (1993).Kunisada's world. Japan Society, in collaboration with Ukiyo-e Society of America.ISBN978-0-913304-37-2., p. 23
=Hear, orHere.
