rebus

Meanings

Noun

• An arrangement of pictures, symbols, and/or words representing phrases or words, especially as a word puzzle.
• An arrangement of pictures on a coat of arms which suggests the name of the person to whom it belongs.

Verb

• To represent (a phrase or word) as a rebus.
• To apply a rebus to (something).

Origin

• From French rébus, or directly from its probable etymon Latin rēbus, the ablative plural of rēs, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *reh₁ís. The connection between the English word and its Latin etymon is unclear.
• The following possibilities have been suggested, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary are problematic:
• According to the French scholar Gilles Ménage (1613–1692) in Les origines de la langue françoise (The Origins of the French Language, 1650), it is taken from the phrase de rebus quae geruntur (“concerning the things that are taking place”) which was used in 16th-century Picardy as the name for satirical writings on contemporary subjects containing picture-riddles that were composed for an annual carnival. However, the term rebus de Picardie is first attested later than the word rébus, and so could simply refer to rebuses popular in Picardy at the time.
• Alternatively, it could be from the phrase nōn verbīs sed rēbus meaning “not by words but by things”, but this “encounters difficulties in the chronology of the senses in French”.