A word or phrase, derived from the inversion or transfer of letters from another word or phrase. An interesting and playful example is getting “Agent’s evil” by shuffling the letters in the word “Evangelists”.
Ferdinand de Saussure studied anagrams in Latin poetry on the premise that Latin poets deliberately disguised proper names in anagrams. He believed that he had discovered an additional sign system, a special series of conventions for the production of meanings, and executed many notebooks with notes on various types of repetitions and anagrams (Culler 1986, 123).
The assumption that the anagrams that Saussure discovered were purposefully created is questionable. What he might find is an unconscious mechanism operating in the poetic modeling of language and probably in less controlled uses of language.
Repetition of sounds or letters when turning and changing shapes could be an important factor in the production of verbal messages, even if the producers of these messages are not aware of the existence or importance of this mechanism.
This is how Julia Kristeva interprets repetitions and inversions.
These unconscious operations may be another case in which people are not always fully aware of what they are doing.
