Rebus


A rebus is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words and/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 favorite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages to denote surnames.
For example, in its basic form, three salmon are used to denote the surname "Salmon". A more sophisticated example was the rebus of Bishop Walter Lyhart of Norwich, consisting of a stag 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 beholder Non verbis, sed rebus, which Latin expression signifies "not by words but by things".

Rebuses within heraldry

Rebuses are used extensively as a form of heraldic expression as a hint to the name of the bearer; they are not synonymous with canting 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 bore as arms: Ermine, on a chief azure five bezants, whilst his rebus, displayed many times in terracotta plaques on the walls of his mansion Sutton 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 the Borough of Congleton in Cheshire consisting of a conger eel, a lion and a tun. This word sequence "conger-leo-tun" enunciates the town's name.
Similarly, the coat of arms of St. Ignatius Loyola contains wolves and a kettle, said by some to be a rebus for "Loyola". The arms of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon feature bows and lions.

Modern rebuses, word plays

A modern example of the rebus used as a form of word play is:
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:
A rebus made up solely of letters is known as a gramogram, grammagram, or letteral word. This concept is sometimes extended to include numbers. Rebuses are sometimes used in crossword puzzles, with multiple letters or a symbol fitting into a single square.

Pictograms

The term rebus also refers to the use of a pictogram to represent a syllabic sound. This adapts pictograms into phonograms. A precursor to the development of the alphabet, this process represents one of the most important developments of writing. Fully developed hieroglyphs read in rebus fashion were in use at Abydos in Egypt as early as 3400 BCE. In Mesopotamia, the principle was first employed on proto-cuneiform tablets, beginning in the Jemdet Nasr period.
The writing of correspondence in rebus form became popular in the 18th century and continued into the 19th century. Lewis Carroll wrote the children he befriended picture-puzzle rebus letters, nonsense letters, and looking-glass letters, which had to be held in front of a mirror to be read. Rebus letters served either as a sort of code or simply as a pastime.

Rebus principle

In linguistics, the rebus principle is the use of existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. Many ancient writing systems used 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 pictographs of "eye—can—sea—ewe".
Some linguists believe that the Chinese developed their writing system according to the rebus principle, and Egyptian hieroglyphs sometimes used a similar system. A famous rebus statue of Ramses II uses three hieroglyphs to compose his name: Horus, for Ra; the child, mes; and the sedge plant, su; the name Ra-mes-su is then formed.
Freud posited that the rebus was the basis for uncovering the latent content of the dream. He wrote, "A dream is a picture puzzle of this sort and our predecessors in the
field of dream interpretation have made the mistake of treating the rebus as a pictorial composition: and as such it has seemed to them
nonsensical and worthless."

Use in game shows

Canada
United Kingdom
United States
India
In Japan, the rebus known as was immensely popular during the Edo period. A piece by ukiyo-e artist Kunisada was "Actor Puzzles" that featured rebuses.
Today the most often seen of these symbols is a picture of a sickle, a circle, and the letter, read as, interpreted as, the old-fashioned form of. This is known as the, and dates to circa 1700, being used in kabuki since circa 1815.
Kabuki actors would wear yukata and other clothing whose pictorial design, in rebus, represented their Yagō "guild names", and would distribute tenugui 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 called that represented the Japanese 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 corporate logos or product logos and incorporating some characters of the name, as in a monogram; see Japanese rebus monogram. The most familiar example globally is the logo for Yamasa soy sauce, which is a ∧ with a サ under it. This is read as Yama, for +.

In popular culture