# Minimal anagram
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 1, 2018, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603 "2018-09-01T12:06:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/1 "2018-09-01T12:06:01Z")
I define a minimal anagram as two words that are the same except that two adjacent letters are swapped. There are many examples: altitude/latitude, ample/maple, casual/causal, martial/marital, option/potion, perfect/prefect, quiet/quite, rogue/rouge, silver/sliver, and many others. What’s the longest minimal anagram?
Three kinds that I’m not interested in:
1. Word pairs that share a prefix or suffix. If both words have the same prefix or suffix and they can be removed and still make a minimal anagram, we’ll ignore those -fixes for the purpose of this question.
2. Spelling variants of the same word: theater/theatre.
3. Words that share the same base word and only twiddle the last letters: anthologies/anthologise.
So far the longest I’ve been able to find is 9 letters: complaint/compliant, optometer/potometer.
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### Author:  [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/2 "2018-09-01T12:29:28Z")
The only 10 letter ones I can find are US/UK variants such as centimeter/centimetre and discreetly/discretely.
The closest other one I think could be filtration/flirtation but that’s a step above minimal as three letters have been changed. Nominal???
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/3 "2018-09-01T12:54:26Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#):
>
> The closest other one I think could be filtration/flirtation but that’s a step above minimal as three letters have been changed. Nominal???
Actually that’s a double minimum. It swaps that 2nd and 3rd letters (I and L) and the 4th and 5th (R and T).
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### Author:  [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/4 "2018-09-01T12:59:44Z")
So it is!
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/5 "2018-09-01T13:04:56Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#):
>
> The only 10 letter ones I can find are US/UK variants such as centimeter/centimetre and discreetly/discretely.
discretely and discreetly are not spelling variants of the same word, they mean completely different things, so it is a good example of what the OP wants.
Edit to add: except the -ly suffix is superfluous so is only 8 letters by the OP’s reckoning.
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### Author:  [@DETXL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DETXL)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/6 "2018-09-01T15:18:18Z")
Nope, misread the wording in the OP 😉
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/7 "2018-09-01T15:53:36Z")
no latitudinarian/altitudinarian ?
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/8 "2018-09-01T16:28:27Z")
imprescriptibilities / imperscriptibilities
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/9 "2018-09-01T17:14:04Z")
> [@Mr\_Shine](#):
>
> discretely and discreetly are not spelling variants of the same word, they mean completely different things, so it is a good example of what the OP wants.
>
> Edit to add: except the -ly suffix is superfluous so is only 8 letters by the OP’s reckoning.
Agreed, but discretely is a real word. I cannot quite imagine what discreetly would mean.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/10 "2018-09-01T17:28:39Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> Agreed, but discretely is a real word. I cannot quite imagine what discreetly would mean.
In a discreet manner?
Surely these are homophones, but not simply spelling variations of the same word.
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### Author:  [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/11 "2018-09-01T17:35:12Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> Agreed, but discretely is a real word. I cannot quite imagine what discreetly would mean.
Huh, two mistakes in the same post then. ☹
I had thought discreet was an American spelling of discrete, but yup, two different meanings…
> **[Discreet vs. Discrete: What’s The Difference?](https://www.dictionary.com/e/discreet-vs-discrete/)**
>
> Ah, another confusing pair of homophones (words that sound alike but are different in meaning). And, we're not going to be discreet about it: these two can be confusing. So, let's try to keep them discrete.
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/12 "2018-09-01T19:14:03Z")
> [@DPRK](#):
>
> no latitudinarian/altitudinarian ?
I assume these were proposed facetiously, since they so obviously have suffixes that would be factored out.
> [@DPRK](#):
>
> imprescriptibilities / imperscriptibilities
Those also have common affixes, but not as many as apparent. “Perscript” doesn’t seem to be a word, nor “imperscript”, but imperscriptible is. New word to me and it isn’t in Webster’s 3rd International. But Collins English Dictionary has [imperscriptible](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/imperscriptible) as well as [imprescriptible](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/imprescriptible). Just checked Webster’s Second and it does have the words, so for some reason “imperscriptible” was removed when they compiled the 3rd edition.
So it looks like imperscriptible/imprescriptible at 15 letters is the winner so far.
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/13 "2018-09-01T19:31:50Z")
I ran a program against a file of 235,000 words, and imperscriptible/imprescriptible is the longest pair I find, and the only 15 letter pair. I see these 14 letter pairs:
latitudinarian altitudinarian
paradisaically paradisiacally
petrographical pterographical
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/14 "2018-09-01T20:24:08Z")
> [@markn\_1](#):
>
> latitudinarian altitudinarian
> paradisaically paradisiacally
> petrographical pterographical
All of which have suffixes that could be factored out:
altitude/latitude
paradisaic/paradisiac
petrographic/pterographic
You’d think the last pair has a common -ic, but it doesn’t look like “pterograph” is a word.
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2018, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagram/820603/15 "2018-09-01T21:44:34Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> Agreed, but discretely is a real word. I cannot quite imagine what discreetly would mean.
The second hand on my watch moves discretely, my last one moved continuously
I had to discreetly talk to Bob about his hygiene today.