verbarium
nounUK /ˌvɜːˈbɛəɹi.əm/ · US /ˌvɝˈbɛɹi.əm/
Etymology From Latin verbum (“word”) + -arium.
1
Dated A word game in which the players are given a set of letters and must form as many words as possible from subsets of those letters.
- We have played Verbarium with great pleasure, dividing the company into two sections or sides.1889, 'anonymous subscriber', “Indoor Games”, in The Christian Union, volume 40, page 311:
- […] next she would play euchre twenty minutes; next it would be a game of verbarium, and so on all the day long—twenty minutes to each fleeting interest, with twenty minutes of billiards sandwiched between every two of them.c. 1908, Mark Twain, Dorothy Quick - Her April Fool's Anecdote: