Meaning & use
a pangram
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once.
Grammar: Countable: you can say 'a pangram', 'two pangrams', 'the pangram'. It is often followed by 'that' or 'which': 'a pangram that contains all 26 letters'.
Patterns
- a pangram uses/contains ...
- write/compose a pangram
- a famous pangram
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is a famous pangram.
Our teacher asked us to write a pangram using all the letters of the alphabet.
This pangram is short but it still contains every letter.
Word forms
| plural | pangrams |
|---|
Common combinations
- a perfect pangram
- A perfect pangram uses each letter exactly once, which is very hard to write.
- a famous pangram
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is a famous pangram.
- write a pangram
- For homework, we had to write a pangram of our own.
- a pangram sentence
- She showed us a pangram sentence that uses every letter at least once.
Word family
- pangrammatic adjective
- Describing something that has the nature of a pangram; very rare.
Commonly confused: a pangram or anagram? a pangram or palindrome?
a pangram vs anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase made by rearranging the letters of another word (listen → silent). A pangram uses all 26 letters, not just the letters of one word.
a pangram vs palindrome
A palindrome reads the same forwards and backwards (madam). A pangram contains every letter of the alphabet.
Practice
Which sentence is a pangram?
Choose one answer.
'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' contains all 26 letters, so it is a pangram. The other three are palindromes — they read the same backwards, but they do not contain every letter.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “a pangram”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.