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

In the 1960s, she caused a small sensation by introducing the rebus puzzle.

From New York Times ● Jan. 30, 2015

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

Pâris strikes the imagination by means of rebuses: an armchair garnished with clincher-nails will give "Clou, vis—Clovis"; and, as the sound of frying makes "ric, ric," whitings in a stove will recall "Chilperic."

From Bouvard and Pécuchet A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life by Gustave Flaubert

Will you truthfully answer the rebuses I shall now propound to the best of your ability, and govern yourself accordingly till the surface of Hades congeals to glistening bergs, and that with no unseemly curiosity?”

From Bransford of Rainbow Range Originally Published under the title of Bransford in Arcadia, or, The Little Eohippus by Eugene Manlove Rhodes