verbarium

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Latin verbum (word) +‎ -arium.

Noun[edit]

verbarium (uncountable)

  1. (dated) A word game in which the players are given a set of letters and must form as many words as possible from subsets of those letters.
    • 1889, 'anonymous subscriber', “Indoor Games”, in The Christian Union, volume 40, page 311:
      We have played Verbarium with great pleasure, dividing the company into two sections or sides.
    • c. 1908, Mark Twain, Dorothy Quick - Her April Fool's Anecdote:
      [] next she would play euchre twenty minutes; next it would be a game of verbarium, and so on all the day long—twenty minutes to each fleeting interest, with twenty minutes of billiards sandwiched between every two of them.