Logomachy-
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
lo-gom'a-ki, a word contest, or war of words. As most commonly used, logomachy is a popular game played with small squares of pasteboard, each bearing a letter on one side. The larger the supply of letters, the greater the number who can play at the game. The letters are turned wrong side up. The first player draws a letter and turns it right side up on the table to start the "pool;" the next player draws and adds his letter to the pool. The first player who can form a word with the letters drawn does so and places his word in front of him on the table in plain sight of all. The players continue to draw and form words, each having the right to take a word from another player provided he uses every letter in it to form a new word and adds to it the letter he draws, a letter or letters from the pool, or all the letters in any other word on the table. The "game" may be any number of words, as ten. Or the players may agree on playing a given length of time, that player winning who has the greatest number of words when the time is up. Fixed rules are necessary, the first of which must be the selection of a dictionary as authority on the correctness of any word that may be challenged. If a player is challenged and proved at fault, he loses his play. Rules as to allowing plurals, participial forms, proper names, etc., must be agreed upon and should be less rigid when children and inexperienced persons are playing. In general a word should not be permitted which involves a very slight change only, as a plural formed by the addition of the letter "s." Another form of logomachy may be played with the lettered squares of cardboard or with pencil and paper. It consists in selecting some long word, as "Constantinople," and forming from its letters as many words as possible. He wins who forms the largest number of words in a given length of time. For example, from the word "Castoria" may be formed at least forty words, as follows: cat castor scar or cast as sac oat cart at soar oar coat art so rat car air stair rot cot aria star roast cost arc sort riot coast sit tar roc core sat tiara it coir sot tore is
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910, "logomachy" was first of all the name of a parlour game played with lettered pasteboard squares, and the article devotes nearly all its space to the rules. That game survives, under the names Anagrams and Snatch, but it was overwhelmed by Alfred Butts's lettered-tile game, marketed as Scrabble from 1948 and a national craze in the United States by 1952; digital descendants such as Words with Friends followed in 2009. Aiton's advice that players must "agree on a dictionary as authority" was in effect settled by the official tournament word lists that began with the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary in 1978. Today the word logomachy is used almost only in its older sense of a barren dispute about words, so a modern dictionary entry looks nothing like this one.
Written for this edition, 2026.