# Minimal anagrams **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 17, 2020, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970 "2020-05-17T08:08:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/1 "2020-05-17T08:08:10Z")
An anagram is a word or phrase that made by rearranging the letters from another word or phrase. For this thread, I’m only interested in those of words (not phrases) and only when there’s the minimal change between them. By minimal, I mean that the only change is swapping two adjacent letters. Examples: incest nicest marital martial rogue rouge There’s tons more of them, even if you ignore short words. What’s the longest minimal anagram pair? For this question, factor out any common prefixes and suffixes. Much rarer is a set of three or more minimal anagrams. Restricting word size to those of 5 or more letters, I only know of two sets of three: besat beast beats thickset thickest thickets So any more of these? ---
**Author:** ![Kimble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimble/32/19185_2.png) [@Kimble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimble)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/2 "2020-05-17T09:09:53Z")
1. I found [this site](https://www.litscape.com/words_enable_uncensored/word_lists.html#mt_anagram) that has a list of letters that form large sets of words in the ENABLE word list. From that, I found these of varying quality: stale steal stela (stone pillar) pries piers peris (Persian winged spirits) beast beats _betas_ (to my surprise, besat isn’t in ENABLE) coast coats costa (not really English, IMHO) 1. While looking for more of those, I found treatise treaties, which may or may not work for you. My eyes are starting to glaze over, so I’m going to go ahead and post what I’ve found so far before the board takes a nap. I’ll keep looking into this and will report if I find anything worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/3 "2020-05-17T10:45:13Z")
> [@Kimble](#): > > beast beats _betas_ (to my surprise, besat isn’t in ENABLE) Well, it’s probably in Web2, but I can’t check at the moment because my big dictionaries are packed away. > [@](#): > > coast coats costa (not really English, IMHO) ‘Costa’ is in M-W Collegiate. It’s a technical term from botany. > [@](#): > > 1. While looking for more of those, I found treatise treaties, which may or may not work for you. Looks good to me. Not the longest I know of. That’s egocentric geocentric (10 letters). Well there’s some longer ones, but they’re questionable. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/4 "2020-05-17T11:23:43Z")
I realised after seeing Kimble’s post that I didn’t describe what I meant by a set of three. What I really meant was a set where the first two words form a minimal anagram and then the second and third form another minimal anagram. If there’s a fourth word, it forms one with number 3. and so forth. Although there could also be a branch where a word forms one with a word in the middle of the set. I can see where I gave the wrong impression about this because I underlined all three letters in all the words of the sets. They should have been more like this: thickset thicke **st** thicke **ts** So that would make the other list, which now has four words, looks like this: besat bea **st** be_a\*\*t_s\*\* be_ta_s [Whew! Getting all those tags correct was challenging. Let’s skip them for the rest of this thread.] There is a problem with that set, though. The last two have a common suffix that should be factored out. But that makes them not be anagrams of the other two. Well, ignore that for now. Only factor out suffixes from all words in the set. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/5 "2020-05-17T12:27:15Z")
Pots, opts, post, (plus stop, tops, spot, ) ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/6 "2020-05-17T15:16:32Z")
I wrote a program to look for minimal anagrams. It found 1410 examples. The longest pair it found is the rather unsatisfying “imperscriptible imprescriptible”. Other long ones that seem interesting to me: paradisaically paradisiacally petrographical pterographical altitudinarian latitudinarian sacrification scarification perceptively preceptively discreetness discreteness optableness potableness unconcerted unconcreted deification edification silverlike sliverlike nonmarital nonmartial octillion cotillion outerness outreness casuality causality complaint compliant ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/7 "2020-05-17T16:51:33Z")
Excommunication is an anagram of excommunication (I swapped the adjacent letter M’s around) ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/8 "2020-05-17T18:27:09Z")
[ol] [/ol] > [@Mangetout](#): > > (I swapped the adjacent letter M’s around) You will be shot at dawn. Sorry, but I don’t make the rules… ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/9 "2020-05-17T18:54:10Z")
> [@whitetho](#): > > You will be shot at dawn. Surely excommunication is a more fitting punishment. (In the first sense, not the second.) ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2020, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/10 "2020-05-18T00:43:44Z")
A lot of the actual minimal pairs in markn+'s list are much shorter than as presented, as they use the same prefixes/suffixes to achieve their length. The first one of the proper list is even lamer than the two law terms he found unsatisfying, as they mean the same thing and the difference is only how to form the adjectival form of “Paradise”. The second I guess is pretty decent as I don’t think you can shorten petroglyph or pteroglyph to just the prefixes and get actual words, even though what are really minimal pairs are the prefixes, which means their length is rather suspect in origin. I think the “best” ones are octillion and cotillion, as the rest of the words are completely unrelated. Complaint and compliant are pretty good too. Also this made me think there are some words that truly are anagrams of themselves, in the sense that the letters of the word can be reanalyzed into different affixes. The one example I think of the most of unionized (In a union, or not ionized). ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2020, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimal-anagrams/853970/11 "2020-05-18T02:19:42Z")
I was going to make a post saying basically what **glowacks** said, so I’ll just say “exactly”. Note that the OP did say to factor out common affixes. As for pterograph (not pteroglyph), that word isn’t in M-W online dictionary. Maybe it’s in some other dictionary, but going just by M-W, we can only shorten that set to petrographic/pterographic. Similarly, egocentric/geocentric also can’t be shortened, even though they have the same -centric suffix. ‘Ego’ is a word, but ‘geo-’ is a combinative form, not a word by itself.