. Verbal play in which initial or individual letters, taken in order, form a word or phrase—called an acrostic—appears in French texts from about the middle of the 13th century, and the practice continues throughout the medieval period. The...

See also poetry, verse This describes a poem or puzzle where the first letter of each line, read sequentially down the page, spells out a word or phrase. In a double acrostic, the first and last letters of each line spell out a word or...

An acrostic (from the late Greek akróstichon, from ákros, "top", and stíchos, "verse") is a poem or other writing in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text...