Pronounced: AM-uh-slan (alt: AM-slan), noun
Notes: Kind of a specialized word; some of you may know it (I didn’t)
Yesterday’s word
The word calligram means “a word, phrase, or piece of text arranged to form a picture of the subject described”
First usage
Our word came into English in the 1920s
Background / Comments
Think of the notes of a scale written to look like a treble clef, or words for ‘bicycle’ in multiple languages arranged to look like a bicycle. These are examples of calligrams. The word comes from the French word calligramme, which comes from the Greek words calli- (beautiful) and -gram (something written). The word ‘calligraphy’ comes from the same sources, with -graph (writing) instead of -gram.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 