Meaning

noun a puzzle where you fill a square grid with words reading the same down as across

noun verse in which certain letters such as the first in each line form a word or message

originBorrowed from Middle French acrostiche, acrostique (“acrostic”) (modern French acrostiche), and its etymon Late Latin acrostichis, from Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), from ἄκρο- (ákro-, prefix indicating, among other things, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos, “row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ- (“to climb,…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0