rebus - Rebuses and Heraldry, Examples, Rebuses and game shows

The enigmatic representation in visual form of the sounds of a name or word. As a form of visual pun, rebuses are often used to puzzle or amuse, such as a drawing of a ray-gun (= ‘Reagan’), or the letters CU (= ‘see you’); some have become part of everyday writing, such as IOU (= ‘I owe you’). They are an ancient means of communication, being found in early forms of picture-writing.

Rebus Principle (Linguistics) is using the existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. Many ancient writing systems used Rebus principle to represent abstract words, which otherwise would be hard to be represented by pictograms.

A rebus (Latin: "by things") is a kind of word puzzle which uses pictures to represent words or parts of words;

The term "rebus" also refers to the use of a pictogram to represent a syllabic sound.

The writing of correspondence in rebus form became popular in the 18th century and continued into the 19th century.

Rebuses and Heraldry

Rebuses are used extensively in heraldry as a hint to the name of the owner of a coat of arms.

Today, rebus puzzles are used as brainteasers and placed in IQ tests.

The more popular rebuses contain simple English letters of the alphabet in different sizes, colors and other manipulations that often represent popular sayings and phrases.

Examples

Here are two examples of this type of rebus puzzle:

Puzzle 1

CCCSAILINGCCCC

Puzzle 2

LIE
KING

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Rebuses and game shows

Rebuses were central to the United States television game show Concentration. Contestants had to solve a rebus, usually partially concealed, to win a game.

The United Kingdom has also had a games show which requires contestants to identify a rebus.