Acrostic

An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the first letter of each new line spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the French acrostiche from post-classical Latin acrostichis, from Koine Greek ἀκροστιχίς, from Ancient Greek ἄκρος "highest, topmost" and στίχος "verse". As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval.

When the last letter of each new line forms a word it is called a telestich ; the combination of an acrostic and a telestich in the same composition is called a double acrostic.

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