Rebus
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Rebus. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a word, name, sentiment or pithy saying set forth in pictures or various devices, such as the position of words, syllables, letters, etc., with reference to some other part of the rebus. Like the charade, the rebus serves for parlor amusement. A few may be given by way of illustration: :A An American author and one of his chief works. The answer is: Mark Twain , Innocents Abroad (in no sense, A broad). In the same way Wyandotte, a town in Kansas, is represented by Y. The following, based entirely on the position of syllables, purports to be a post-office address: hill John Mass. The postal authorities are supposed to interpret: John Underhill, Andover, Massachusetts. A variety of rebuses may be expressed in a simple way by a picture or two, as: A noted discoverer--A column and an omnibus. A state of the American union--Noah's ark and a handsaw. A city of Massachusetts--A sail bearing the letter M. The Keystone state--A lead pencil, a weather vane and A.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a word, name, or phrase represented by the figure of an object which resembles in sound the words, or syllables of the words, indicated; an enigmatical representation of words by the use of figures or pictures; thus, a "bolt" and a "tun" represent "Bolton." In heraldry, a device intended to represent a proper name by a picture; a bearing or bearings on a coat of arms, containing an allusion to the name of the owner; as in the coat of the family of Arches, which consists of three arches.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The mechanics Aiton's described in 1910 and Collier's in 1921 — a bolt plus a tun for "Bolton," a sail plus an M for Salem — work exactly the same way today, and the rebus is still a staple of newspaper puzzle pages, children's books and picture-based brand logos. What has moved is chiefly the word's scholarly weight: the "rebus principle," using a picture for the sound of a word rather than its meaning, is now standard in explaining how Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Maya script became true writing, a framework that grew with the decipherment work of the mid-twentieth century. The heraldic sense Collier's noted, arms punning on the owner's name, survives under the name canting arms. And since the 2010s the emoji keyboard has revived the parlor game on a scale no 1910 reader could have pictured, with whole sentences and even novels rendered in pictures.
Written for this edition, 2026.