ABSTRACT
The meaning of a verse is contained in the interpretation of its conventional sense, its linguistic form and its pragmatic implication. In the pragmatic exploration of meaning, interpretation of expressions can be achieved by the concepts of explicature and implicature. Abcderian verses are acrostic in nature and contain embedded meanings. Prayers and hymns have also been rendered in the abcderian form in literature. Extant works in scholarship have existed on explicature and implicature using texts such as newspapers and institutional conversations. This work departs from those studies by contextualizing the linguistic and extended senses of abcderian verses to determine their meaning. The work explores the new dimensions of elementary verses to meet the continual changes in the aspects of cultural, arts and aesthetics. The verses, rendered in Yoruba, are transliterated to English and subjected to relevance theory. The chapter avers that within the verses are moralities and injunctions revealed through references, implicitness, veiled utterance, ironic mockery and sarcasm. The verses promote the people’s culture and enhance the intellectual development of children.
