← Glossary · wordplay & rhetoric
Pangram
· from Greek
What is a pangram?
A pangram is a sentence that uses every letter of an alphabet at least once, like The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Pangrams are used to test typefaces and keyboards. Japanese has a famous perfect pangram, the Iroha poem, which uses each kana exactly once. The Chinese Thousand Character Classic (千字文) is a 1,000-character poem traditionally said to use no character twice.
Examples
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog; いろはにほへと iroha nihoheto (opening of the Iroha poem); 千字文 Qiānzìwén (Thousand Character Classic), opening 天地玄黃 tiān dì xuán huáng
Kungfucius says: The fox has been jumping over that dog since the 19th century. Nobody has asked the dog.