[‘ A sentence or (occas.) verse containing every letter of the alphabet.']
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈpanɡram/, ˈpaŋɡram, U.S. /ˈpænˌɡræm/, ˈpæŋˌɡræm
Inflections: Plural *pangrams*, (occas.) *pangrammata*.
Etymology: < pan- comb. form + -gram comb. form, after anagram n. Compare earlier pangrammatist n.
A sentence or (occas.) verse containing every letter of the alphabet.
1873 /Galaxy/ June 861/1 The family of Grams is large. There are epigrams, anagrams, chronograms, monograms, lipograms, pangrams, and paragrams.
1875 C. C. Bombaugh /Gleanings/ (unabridged ed.) p. vii, The literary follies known as Lipogrammata and Pangrammata; In the first, a particular letter is dropped; in the second, all the letters of the alphabet are crowded into single verses or sentences.
1964 /Sci. Amer./ Sept. 222 The pangram, an ancient form of word play, is an attempt to get the maximum number of different letters into a sentence of minimum length.
1991 S. J. Gould /Bully for Brontosaurus/ iv. 75 A free copy of this and all my subsequent books to anyone who can construct a 26-letter pangram with common words only and no proper names.
2001 /Publishers Weekly/ (Nexis) 23 July 14 It’s about a family living on an island that is also home to the original author of the pangram ‘The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog.’