What is a rebus?
Updated October 5, 2026 · 6 min read · by the Rebus Master team · Favo Games · 11 sources
A rebus is a puzzle that spells out a word or phrase using pictures, symbols, letters and their arrangement instead of plain writing. Reading one means saying what you see: an eye 👁 + a heart ❤ + the letter U reads “I love you”. Position, size, direction and repetition all carry meaning.
This guide comes from the team behind Rebus Master, a free picture rebus puzzle game for iPhone and Android by Favo Games.
Pronunciation: REE-bəs (/ˈriː.bəs/) · Plural: rebuses · Part of speech: noun (Cambridge Dictionary)
“A representation of words or syllables by pictures of objects or by symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound.”
— Merriam-Webster, “rebus”
Where does the word “rebus” come from?
Rebus is Latin for “by things” — the ablative plural of res, “thing”. Merriam-Webster dates its first known use in English to 1605. The heraldic motto non verbis, sed rebus — “not by words, but by things” — sums the idea up (Wikipedia), and Etymonline records a French theory that the word comes from de rebus quae geruntur (“of things which are going on”), the name of picture satires made by clerks in Picardy.
That is exactly what a rebus does: it swaps words for things and lets your brain sound out the result. It is one of the oldest word games we know of, and it still powers everything from children’s books to emoji riddles and modern puzzle apps. Today you’ll also hear rebuses called picture brain teasers or picture riddles — newer names for the same old trick.
How a rebus works
Almost every rebus leans on a handful of tricks. Once you can name them, you can read almost anything (our solving guide goes deeper on each):
- Pictures for sounds. A picture stands for its word — or just its sound. A bee can mean bee, be or the letter B.
- Position. Where things sit changes the reading: “stand” printed over “I” reads I understand; a man drawn over the word “board” reads man overboard.
- Size. A huge word can add big; a tiny one adds little or micro.
- Direction. A word written backwards or upside down often adds back, reverse or down.
- Counting. Three copies of “SECRET” with an arrow at the top one reads top secret.
- Letter math. Adding or crossing out letters builds new words: CAKE − C + L = LAKE.
A very short history of the rebus
Rebuses are older than alphabets. Egyptian hieroglyphs used the rebus principle — a picture borrowed for its sound rather than its meaning — so a drawing could spell a name no picture existed for; hieroglyphs read this way were in use at Abydos as early as about 3400 BCE (Wikipedia: Rebus). Ancient coins played the same game: the Greek city of Selinus, named after wild celery (selinon), stamped a celery leaf on its coins (Wikipedia: Selinunte).
Medieval Europe put rebuses on shields. Canting arms in heraldry encoded a name in pictures (Wikipedia: Canting arms) — the arms of Congleton in Cheshire show a conger eel, a lion (Latin leo) and a barrel (a tun): conger-leo-tun. Later, rebuses became parlour entertainment: letters written in rebus form were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, wrote picture-puzzle rebus letters to the children he befriended (Wikipedia: Rebus). By the 20th century rebuses had their own TV game shows, and today they live on in escape rooms, puzzle apps and the emoji riddles people trade in group chats. The full story is in our history of the rebus.
Rebus, cryptogram, pictogram — what’s the difference?
| Puzzle type | How it works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Rebus | Pictures, symbols and letter layout are sounded out to reach a different word or phrase | 👁 ❤ U → “I love you” |
| Pictogram | A picture means exactly what it shows — a label, not a riddle | ✈ on an airport sign → “plane” |
| Word picture (dingbat) | A rebus made only of letters and their position, size or direction | MIND over MATTER |
| Emoji riddle | A rebus written with emoji, usually for a title or phrase | 🌟 + ⚔ → “Star Wars” |
| Cryptogram | Text hidden by substituting letters, numbers or symbols — no pictures needed | Each number stands for one letter |
- A pictogram shows what it means: a picture of a plane means plane (think airport signs).
- A rebus makes you sound out pictures and symbols to reach a different word or phrase — the picture is a riddle, not a label.
- A cryptogram hides text behind substituted letters, numbers or symbols — no pictures needed.
Modern puzzle games often blend these. In Rebus Master, each level shows an illustrated rebus, and you crack the phrase on a cryptogram-style letter grid — tiles that share a number hide the same letter. Two classic puzzle forms in one. All of them, rebus included, belong to the wider family of brain teasers — the rebus is simply its oldest picture-based member.
What is a rebus in a crossword?
Crossword solvers use the word a little differently. In a crossword rebus, a single square holds more than one letter — a whole word, a symbol or a number — instead of the usual one. The New York Times crossword hides rebus squares most often in its Thursday puzzles, and XWord Info, which archives the Times puzzle, lists more than 600 of them. If an answer seems one letter too long for its slot, try squeezing a short word such as STAR or HEART into one square — that is the same picture-for-word idea, just packed into a grid.
Famous rebuses
- Leonardo da Vinci’s picture puzzles — around 1487–90 Leonardo filled a sheet with pictographs that spell out short Italian phrases, writing each solution underneath in his mirror script. The sheet is in the Royal Collection.
- Canting arms — medieval coats of arms that picture the bearer’s name, a family rebus painted on a shield (Britannica).
- I ♥ NY — Milton Glaser’s 1976 design lets a heart stand for the word “love”. His concept sketch is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
What is a rebus message?
A rebus message is regular writing with some words swapped for pictures — the way children’s early-reader books print a small picture of a dog instead of the word “dog”, or the way “I ❤ U” compresses a sentence into three symbols. It is the friendliest form of the rebus: the pictures help reading instead of hiding it. Every emoji-only riddle in a group chat is a rebus message at heart.
Rebus examples with answers
Read the picture out loud, then reveal the answer. Want examples made only of letters? See 33 word rebus puzzles like MIND over MATTER.
Warmed up? There are 40 more rebus puzzles with answers — or jump straight into today’s daily rebus. If figurative phrases are what trip you up, start with our idiom puzzles.
What is a rebus called in other languages?
The same puzzle goes by many names. In Turkish it is a resfebe, a word coined from resim (picture) and alfabe (alphabet) (Turkish Wikipedia: Resfebe; Türkçe rehber). French says rébus, German Bilderrätsel (“picture riddle”), Spanish jeroglífico, Italian, Dutch and Polish rebus, Russian ребус and Japanese 判じ物 (hanjimono) — the titles of the matching Wikipedia articles in each language (Wikipedia).
Frequently asked questions
What does “rebus” mean?
Rebus comes from the Latin phrase “non verbis, sed rebus” — “not by words, but by things”. A rebus communicates a word or phrase through things: pictures, symbols, letters and their arrangement.
What is a rebus message?
A rebus message is ordinary text with some words swapped for pictures or symbols — like writing “I ❤ U” for “I love you”. Children’s books use rebus messages to help early readers, and emoji texting works on the same principle.
Is a rebus the same as a cryptogram?
No. A rebus encodes a phrase in pictures; a cryptogram encodes text by substituting letters or numbers. Some modern puzzle games, like Rebus Master, combine both: you read the picture, then fill in a letter grid.
What is an example of a rebus?
The word “stand” printed above the word “I” reads “I understand” — because the letters literally stand over “I”. An eye, a heart and the letter U read “I love you”.
Where can I play rebus puzzles?
You can solve a free illustrated rebus in your browser every day at rebusmaster.com/daily, or get the Rebus Master app on iOS and Android with 1,700+ levels.
Keep going
Play the daily rebusOne free puzzle a day, right in your browser
How to solve rebus puzzles9 practical tricks with worked examples
Rebus puzzles with answers40 illustrated puzzles, easy to hard
Idiom puzzlesLearn English idioms the fun way
The history of the rebus5,000 years of picture puzzles — hieroglyphs to emoji
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Sources
- Merriam-Webster — “rebus”: definition, etymology, first known use (1605)
- Cambridge Dictionary — “rebus”: pronunciation
- Online Etymology Dictionary — “rebus”: Latin origin and the Picardy theory
- Wikipedia — Rebus: non verbis, sed rebus, hieroglyphs at Abydos, the Congleton arms, rebus letters, Lewis Carroll, game shows
- Wikipedia — Canting arms: heraldic name puns
- Wikipedia — Selinunte: the celery-leaf coins of Selinus
- Turkish Wikipedia — Resfebe: the Turkish word and its origin
- Britannica — Canting arms: punning coats of arms
- Royal Collection Trust — Leonardo da Vinci, pictographs (RCIN 912692): date and mirror-written solutions
- Museum of Modern Art — Milton Glaser, I ♥ NY concept sketch (1976)
- XWord Info — Rebus puzzles: New York Times crosswords with rebus squares
About this guide: written by the Favo Games team, the studio behind Rebus Master. We’ve designed and illustrated 1,700+ rebus levels — these guides distill what we’ve learned making them. Illustrations are AI-assisted; every puzzle, hint and answer is written and checked by hand.