A rebus is a traditional puzzle in which a message is encoded by replacing words by pictures and letters. You figure out the big picture by properly decoding the little clues.
Rebuses were once a common form of amusement in puzzles from the 19th century; they still showed up in children's puzzle pages in the newspaper some years ago, and still occur in the pages of Games magazine. At one time, there was a rebus version of Bible passages printed, presumably for the amusement and education of children. There have been a few recent puzzle books based on rebuses. A particularly interesting example is Kim Palmer's The Dream: a Rebus, which told a story entirely in pictures, and which was quite difficult to work out, since the meaning was complex, and the pictures often obscure.
By analogy, we may say that a rebus word is one that can be broken up into shorter words. Sometimes, the pronunciation of the shorter words is a false clue to that of the full word. Sometimes, the meaning of the shorter words is comical. Breaking up a big word into simple pieces is also a common strategy in charades.
| Word | Rebus |
|---|---|
| abundance | a + bun + dance |
| Armageddon | arm + aged + don |
| artichoke | art + I + choke |
| autodidact | auto + did + act |
| castration | cast + ration |
| casualties | casual + ties |
| digit | dig + it |
| figurine | fig + urine |
| Hippocrates | hippo + crates |
| lacerate | lace + rate |
| legend | leg + end |
| malefactor | male + factor |
| massacre | mass + acre |
| medallion | medal + lion |
| mustache | must + ache |
| orbiter | or + biter |
| pageant | page + ant |
| Popeyes | pope + yes |
| proliferate | prolife + rate |
| pronouncement | pronoun + cement |
| readjust | read + just |
| sinecure | sine + cure |
| sundry | sun + dry |
| surface | surf + ace |
| therapist | the + rapist |