rebus

The effect of these lines, which reach back into the past while projecting far into the future, is that of a rebus, with the stunning phrase “the final whereabouts” offering one more breath of indirection.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2022

It reminds me of a surrealist painting, or a rebus puzzle.

From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2021

A modern-day equivalent would be using a picture of an eye to represent “I” — a linguistic concept called the rebus principle.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2019

A rebus, a romance, a gothic thriller and a woozy comedy, “The Handmaiden” is finally and most significantly a liberation story.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2016

Linguists term this decisive innovation, which also underlies puns today, the rebus principle.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

I grew up doing crosswords, riddles and rebuses.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2025

Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images In essence, Griffiths had to crack an elaborate Tudor code of rebuses, ciphers, heraldic motifs and symbolic flowers to discover who the man was.

From The Guardian ● May 19, 2015

More complex rebuses are pictures whose elements, correctly named and put together, make up words or sentences.

From Time Magazine Archive

There must be a limit, even to rebuses.

From Les Misérables by Isabel Florence Hapgood

Emblems, rebuses, and puns, the delight of the Jesuits, were very fit for that purpose.

From Priests, Women, and Families by Jules Michelet