lipogram

Literary composition in which the author leaves out one or more letters of the alphabet. The Greek poet Lasus (6th century BC) wrote lipogrammatic verse, and Tryphiodorus, a writer of the 6th century AD, compiled an Odyssey in 24 books, from each of which he excluded one of the letters of the Greek alphabet.

Some Latin verse was occasionally written in the form of lipograms, and the 19th-century German poet Friedrich Rückert wrote poems excluding the letter ‘r’. The form has also been popular with French and Spanish writers; Lope de Vega wrote five novels from each of which one of the vowels is excluded.