A palindrome is a word,
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panama". The 19-letter
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
word ''saippuakivikauppias'' (a
soapstone
Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the zo ...
vendor), is the longest single-word palindrome in everyday use, while the 12-letter term ''tattarrattat'' (from
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
in ''
Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
'') is the longest in English.
The word ''palindrome'' was introduced by English poet and writer
Henry Peacham in 1638.
[Henry Peacham, ''The Truth of our Times Revealed out of One Mans Experience'', 1638]
p. 123
/ref> The concept of a palindrome can be dated to the 3rd-century BCE, although no examples survive; the first physical examples can be dated to the 1st-century CE with the Latin acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...
word square
A word square is a type of acrostic. It consists of a set of words written out in a square grid, such that the same words can be read both horizontally and vertically. The number of words, which is equal to the number of letters in each word, is ...
, the Sator Square
The Sator Square (or the Rotas-Sator Square, or the Templar Magic Square) is a two-dimensional acrostic class of word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome. The earliest Sator squares were found at several Roman-era sites, all in ROT ...
(contains both word and sentence palindromes), and the 4th-century Greek Byzantine sentence palindrome ''nipson anomemata me monan opsin
''Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin'' ( grc, Νίψον ἀνομήματα, μὴ μόναν ὄψιν), meaning "Wash the sins, not only the face", or "Wash my transgressions, not only my face", is a Greek palindromeThe romanization is not a p ...
.''William Martin Leake
William Martin Leake (14 January 17776 January 1860) was an English military man, topographer, diplomat, antiquarian, writer, and Fellow of the Royal Society. He served in the British military, spending much of his career in the
Mediterrane ...
, ''Researches in Greece'', 1814, p. 85
Palindrome are also found in music (the table canon
A Table canon is a retrograde and inverse canon meant to be placed on a table in between two musicians, who both read the same line of music in opposite directions. As both parts are included in each single line, a second line is not needed. Bac ...
and crab canon
A crab canon (also known by the Latin form of the name, ''canon cancrizans''; as well as ''retrograde canon'', ''canon per recte et retro'' or ''canon per rectus et inversus'')Kennedy, Michael (ed.). 1994. "Canon". The Oxford Dictionary of Musi ...
) and biological structures (most genomes
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding gen ...
include palindromic gene sequences). In automata theory
Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science. The word ''automata'' comes from the Greek word αὐτόματο ...
, the set of all palindromes over an alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
is a context-free language, but it is not regular.
Etymology
The word ''palindrome'' was introduced by English poet and writer Henry Peacham in 1638. It is derived from the Greek roots 'again' and 'way, direction'; a different word is used in Greek, καρκινικός 'carcinic' (lit. ''crab-like'') to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.
Historical development
The ancient Greek poet Sotades
Sotades ( el, Σωτάδης; 3rd century BC) was an Ancient Greek literature#Hellenistic poetry, Ancient Greek poet.
Biography
Sotades was born in Maroneia, either the one in Thrace, or in Crete. He lived in History of Alexandria#Ptolemaic era, ...
(3rd-century BC) invented a form of Ionic meter The ionic (or Ionic) is a four-syllable metrical unit ''(metron)'' of light-light-heavy-heavy (u u – –) that occurs in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. According to Hephaestion it was known as the ''Ionicos'' because it was used by the Ionians ...
called Sotadic or Sotadean verse, which is sometimes said to have been palindromic, but no examples survive, and the exact nature of the readings is unclear.
A 1st-century Latin palindrome was found as a graffito at Pompeii
Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried ...
. This palindrome, known as the Sator Square
The Sator Square (or the Rotas-Sator Square, or the Templar Magic Square) is a two-dimensional acrostic class of word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome. The earliest Sator squares were found at several Roman-era sites, all in ROT ...
, consists of a sentence written in Latin: "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" 'The sower Arepo holds with effort the wheels'. It is also an acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...
where the first letters of each word form the first word, the second letters form the second word, and so forth. Hence, it can be arranged into a word square
A word square is a type of acrostic. It consists of a set of words written out in a square grid, such that the same words can be read both horizontally and vertically. The number of words, which is equal to the number of letters in each word, is ...
that reads in four different ways: horizontally or vertically from either top left to bottom right or bottom right to top left. Other palindromes found at Pompeii include "Roma-Olina-Milo-Amor", which is also written as an acrostic square. Indeed, composing palindromes was "a pastime of Roman landed gentry".
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
baptismal font
A baptismal font is an article of church furniture used for baptism.
Aspersion and affusion fonts
The fonts of many Christian denominations are for baptisms using a non-immersive method, such as aspersion (sprinkling) or affusion (pouring). ...
s were often inscribed with the 4th-century Greek palindrome, (or ) ("'' Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin''") 'Wash our
Our or OUR may refer to:
* The possessive form of " we"
* Our (river), in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany
* Our, Belgium, a village in Belgium
* Our, Jura, a commune in France
* Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), a government utility regulato ...
sin(s), not only our
Our or OUR may refer to:
* The possessive form of " we"
* Our (river), in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany
* Our, Belgium, a village in Belgium
* Our, Jura, a commune in France
* Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), a government utility regulato ...
face', attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory of Nazianzus ( el, Γρηγόριος ὁ Ναζιανζηνός, ''Grēgorios ho Nazianzēnos''; ''Liturgy of the Hours'' Volume I, Proper of Saints, 2 January. – 25 January 390,), also known as Gregory the Theologian or Gregory N ...
;[Alex Preminger, ed., ''Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'', 1965, , ''s.v.'' 'palindrome', p. 596] most notably in the basilica of Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia ( 'Holy Wisdom'; ; ; ), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque ( tr, Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi), is a mosque and major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The cathedral was originally built as a Greek Ortho ...
in Constantinople
la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه
, alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...
. The inscription is found on fonts in many churches in Western Europe: Orléans
Orléans (;["Orleans"](_blank)
(US) and [Dulwich College
Dulwich College is a 2–19 independent, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...]
; Nottingham
Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east ...
( St. Mary's); Worlingworth
Worlingworth is a village and civil parish in the Mid Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England, located around ten miles south-east of Diss. In 2011 it had a total population of 802 people.
The village has a primary school called Worli ...
; Harlow
Harlow is a large town and local government district located in the west of Essex, England. Founded as a new town, it is situated on the border with Hertfordshire and London, Harlow occupies a large area of land on the south bank of the upp ...
; Knapton
Knapton is a village and a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is southeast of Cromer, northeast of Norwich and northeast of London. The Village is located alongside the B1145 a route which runs between King's Lynn and ...
; London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
(St Martin, Ludgate
St Martin, Ludgate, also known as St Martin within Ludgate, is an Anglican church on Ludgate Hill in the ward of Farringdon, in the City of London. The church is of medieval origin, but the present building dates from 1677 to 1684 and was design ...
); and Hadleigh (Suffolk).[
An 11th-century palindrome with the same square property is the ]Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
palindrome, פרשנו רעבתן שבדבש נתבער ונשרף ''perashnu: ra`avtan shebad'vash nitba`er venisraf'' 'We explained the glutton who is in the honey was burned and incinerated', credited to Abraham ibn Ezra in 1924, and referring to the halachic
''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical commandm ...
question as to whether a fly landing in honey makes the honey ''treif
(also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, yi, כּשר), fro ...
'' (non-kosher).
The palindromic Latin riddle "''In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni''" 'we go in a circle at night and are consumed by fire' describes the behavior of moths. It is likely that this palindrome is from medieval rather than ancient times. The second word, borrowed from Greek, should properly be spelled ''gyrum''.
In English, there are many palindrome ''words'' such as ''eye'', ''madam'', and ''deified'', but English writers generally cited Latin and Greek palindromic sentences in the early 19th century; though John Taylor had coined one in 1614: "Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel" (with the ampersand
The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and".
Etymology
Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...
being something of a "fudge"). This is generally considered the first English-language palindrome sentence and was long-reputed, notably by the grammarian James "Hermes" Harris, to be the ''only'' one, despite many efforts to find others.["On Palindromes"
'']The New Monthly Magazine
''The New Monthly Magazine'' was a British monthly magazine published from 1814 to 1884. It was founded by Henry Colburn and published by him through to 1845.
History
Colburn and Frederic Shoberl established ''The New Monthly Magazine and Univ ...
'
2:170–173
(July–December 1821)["Ingenious Arrangement of Words", ''The Gazette of the Union, Golden Rule, and Odd Fellows' Family Companion']
9:30 (July 8, 1848)
/ref> (Taylor had also composed two other, "rather indifferent", palindromic lines of poetry: "Deer Madam, Reed", "Deem if I meed".[H.B. Wheatley, ''Of Anagrams: A Monograph Treating of Their History from the Earliest Ages...'', London, 1862]
p. 9-11
/ref>) Then in 1848, a certain "J.T.R." coined "Able was I ere I saw Elba", which became famous after it was (implausibly) attributed to Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
(alluding to his exile on Elba). Other well-known English palindromes are: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panama" (1948),[By Leigh Mercer, published in ''Notes and Queries,'' 13 November 1948, according to ''The Yale Book of Quotations,'' F. R. Shapiro, ed. (2006, ).] "Madam, I'm Adam" (1861), and "Never odd or even".
Types
Characters, words, or lines
The most familiar palindromes in English are character-unit palindromes. The characters read the same backward as forward. Some examples of palindromic words are ''redivider'', ''deified'', ''civic'', ''radar'', ''level'', ''rotor'', ''kayak'', ''reviver'', ''racecar'', ''madam'', and ''refer''.
There are also word-unit palindromes in which the unit of reversal is the word ("Is it crazy how saying sentences backwards creates backwards sentences saying how crazy it is?"). Word-unit palindromes were made popular in the recreational linguistics
Logology (or ludolinguistics) is the field of recreational linguistics, an activity that encompasses a wide variety of word games and wordplay. The term is analogous to the term "recreational mathematics".
Overview
Some of the topics studied in l ...
community by J. A. Lindon
James Albert Lindon ( – 16 December 1979) was an English puzzle enthusiast and poet specialising in light verse, constrained writing, and children's poetry.
Lindon was based in Addlestone and Weybridge. His poems often won weekly newspaper com ...
in the 1960s. Occasional examples in English were created in the 19th century. Several in French and Latin date to the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
.
There are also line-unit palindromes, most often poems. These possess an initial set of lines which, precisely halfway through, is repeated in reverse order, without alteration to word order within each line, and in a way that the second half continues the "story" related in the first half in a way that makes sense, this last being key.
Sentences and phrases
Palindromes often consist of a sentence or phrase, e.g., "Mr. Owl ate my metal worm", "Do geese see God?", or "Was it a car or a cat I saw?". Punctuation, capitalization, and spaces are usually ignored. Some, such as "Rats live on no evil star", "Live on time, emit no evil", and "Step on no pets", include the spaces.
Names
Some names are palindromes, such as the given name
A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a fa ...
s Hannah, Ava, Aviva, Anna, Eve, Bob and Otto, or the surname
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...
s Harrah, Renner, Salas, and Nenonen.
Lon Nol
Marshal Lon Nol ( km, លន់ នល់, also ; 13 November 1913 – 17 November 1985) was a Cambodian politician and general who served as Prime Minister of Cambodia
The prime minister of Cambodia ( km, នាយករដ្ឋមន្ ...
(1913–1985) was Prime Minister of Cambodia. Nisio Isin
, stylized as NISIOISIN to emphasize the palindrome, is a pseudonymous Japanese novelist, manga author, and screenplay writer.
Nisio debuted in 2002 with the novel ''The Beheading Cycle'' (the first in his '' Zaregoto'' series), which earned hi ...
is a Japanese novelist and manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
writer, whose pseudonym (西尾 維新, ''Nishio Ishin'') is a palindrome when romanized using the Kunrei-shiki
is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Its name is rendered ''Kunreisiki rômazi'' in the system itself. Kunrei-shiki is sometimes known as the Monbushō system in English bec ...
or the Nihon-shiki
Nihon-shiki ( ja, 日本式ローマ字, "Japan-style," romanized as ''Nihonsiki'' in the system itself), is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japan ...
systems, and is often written as NisiOisiN to emphasize this. Some people have changed their name in order to make it palindromic (including as the actor Robert Trebor
Robert Trebor (born June 7, 1953) is an American character actor, perhaps best known for starring as Salmoneus on the cult hits ''Hercules: The Legendary Journeys'' and '' Xena: Warrior Princess''. The surname of his stage name (Trebor) is an ana ...
and rock-vocalist Ola Salo
Ola Salo (born Rolf Ola Anders Svensson; 19 February 1977) is a Swedish rock musician, and the lead vocalist of Swedish glam rock band The Ark.
Early life
He lived in Rottne, Växjö Municipality, in Sweden when he was a child, where, in 1991, ...
), while others were given a palindromic name at birth (such as the philologist Revilo P. Oliver, the flamenco dancer Sara Baras
Sara Pereyra Baras (born April 25, 1971) is a Spanish flamenco dancer and choreographer born in San Fernando (Cádiz) who has established her own dance company.
Biography
Sara was born in San Fernando, in the province of Cádiz
Cádiz ( ...
, the runner Anuța Cătună
Anuța Cătună (born October 1, 1968, in Lunca Ilvei, Bistrița-Năsăud) is a former female long-distance runner from Romania, who represented her native country at two consecutive Summer Olympics, starting in 1996. She won the 1996 edition of ...
, the sportswriter Mark Kram and the creator of the Eden Project Tim Smit
Sir Timothy Bartel Smit KBE (born 25 September 1954) is a Dutch-born British businessman, famous for his work on the Lost Gardens of Heligan, the Eden Project, and the Charlestown Shipwreck & Treasure Centre, all in Cornwall, England.
Early li ...
).
There are also palindromic names in fictional media. "Stanley Yelnats" is the name of the main character in ''Holes
A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in many fields of en ...
'', a 1998 novel and 2003 film. Five of the fictional ''Pokémon
(an abbreviation for in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures (company), Creatures, the owners of the trademark and copyright of the franchise.
In terms of ...
'' species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
have palindromic names in English (Eevee
is a Pokémon species in Nintendo and Game Freak's '' Pokémon'' franchise. Created by Motofumi Fujiwara, it first appeared in the video games ''Pokémon Red'' and ''Blue''. It has later appeared in various merchandise, spinoff titles, as w ...
, Girafarig, Farigiraf, Ho-Oh, and Alomomola), as does the region Alola.
The 1970s pop band ABBA
ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's ...
is a palindrome using the starting letter of the first name of each of the four band members.
Numbers
The digits of a palindromic number are the same read backwards as forwards, for example, 91019; decimal
The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...
representation is usually assumed. In recreational mathematics
Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research and application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited ...
, palindromic numbers with special properties are sought. For example, 191 and 313 are palindromic prime
In mathematics, a palindromic prime (sometimes called a palprime) is a prime number that is also a palindromic number. Palindromicity depends on the base of the number system and its notational conventions, while primality is independent of such ...
s.
Whether Lychrel number
A Lychrel number is a natural number that cannot form a palindrome through the iterative process of repeatedly reversing its digits and adding the resulting numbers. This process is sometimes called the ''196-algorithm'', after the most famous numb ...
s exist is an unsolved problem in mathematics about whether all numbers become palindromes when they are continuously reversed and added. For example, 56 is not a Lychrel number as 56 + 65 = 121, and 121 is a palindrome. The number 59 becomes a palindrome after three iterations: 59 + 95 = 154; 154 + 451 = 605; 605 + 506 = 1111, so 59 is not a Lychrel number either. Numbers such as 196 are thought to never become palindromes when this reversal process is carried out and are therefore suspected of being Lychrel numbers. If a number is not a Lychrel number, it is called a "delayed palindrome" (56 has a delay of 1 and 59 has a delay of 3). In January 2017 the number 1,999,291,987,030,606,810 was published in OEIS as A281509, and described as "The Largest Known Most Delayed Palindrome", with a delay of 261. Several smaller 261-delay palindromes were published separately as A281508.
Every positive integer can be written as the sum of three palindromic numbers in every number system with base 5 or greater.
Dates
A day or timestamp is a palindrome when its digits are the same when reversed. Only the digits are considered in this determination and the component separators (hyphens, slashes, and dots) are ignored. Short digits may be used as in '' 11/11/11 11:11'' or long digits as in ''2 February 2020''.
A notable palindrome day is this century's 2 February 2020 because this date is a palindrome regardless of the date format by country
The legal and cultural expectations for date and time representation vary between countries, and it is important to be aware of the forms of all-numeric calendar dates used in a particular country to know what date is intended.
Writers have trad ...
(yyyy-mm-dd, dd-mm-yyyy, or mm-dd-yyyy) used in various countries. For this reason, this date has also been termed as a "Universal Palindrome Day". Other universal palindrome days include, almost a millennium previously, ''11/11/1111'', the future ''12/12/2121'', and in a millennium ''03/03/3030''.
In speech
A phonetic palindrome is a portion of speech
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...
that is identical or roughly identical when reversed. It can arise in context where language is played with, for example in slang dialects like ''verlan
() is a type of argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The wor ...
''. In the French language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...
, there is the phrase ' ("a Slavic woman waltzes naked"), phonemically . John Oswald discussed his experience of phonetic palindromes while working on audio tape versions of the cut-up technique using recorded readings by William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
. A list of phonetic palindromes discussed by word puzzle
Word games (also called word game puzzles or word search games) are spoken, board, or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.
Word games are generally used as a source of entertainment, but can add ...
columnist O.V. Michaelsen (Ove Ofteness) include "crew work"/"work crew", "dry yard", "easy", "Funny enough", "Let Bob tell", "new moon", "selfless", "Sorry, Ross", "Talk, Scott", "to boot", "top spot" (also an orthographic palindrome), "Y'all lie", "You're caught. Talk, Roy", and "You're damn mad, Roy".
Longest palindromes
The longest single-word palindrome in the ''Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' is the 12-letter onomatopoeic word ''tattarrattat'', coined by James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
in ''Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
'' (1922) for a knock on the door. The ''Guinness Book of Records'' gives the title to the 11-letter ''detartrated'', the preterite
The preterite or preterit (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple pas ...
and past participle of ''detartrate'', a chemical term meaning to remove tartrate
A tartrate is a salt or ester of the organic compound tartaric acid, a dicarboxylic acid. The formula of the tartrate dianion is O−OC-CH(OH)-CH(OH)-COO− or C4H4O62−.
The main forms of tartrates used commercially are pure crystalline ta ...
s. The 9-letter word Rotavator
A cultivator is a piece of agricultural machinery, agricultural equipment used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with ''teeth'' (also called ''shanks'') that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it wikt:li ...
, a trademarked name for an agricultural machine, is listed in dictionaries as being the longest single-word palindrome. The 9-letter term ''redivider'' is used by some writers, but appears to be an invented or derived term; only ''redivide'' and ''redivision'' appear in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary; the 9-letter word ''Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
'', a language of southern India, is also of equal length.
According to Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
, the Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
19-letter word ''saippuakivikauppias'' (a soapstone
Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the zo ...
vendor), is the world's longest palindromic word in everyday use.
English palindrome sentences of notable length include mathematician Peter Hilton
Peter John Hilton (7 April 1923Peter Hilton, "On all Sorts of Automorphisms", '' The American Mathematical Monthly'', 92(9), November 1985, p. 6506 November 2010) was a British mathematician, noted for his contributions to homotopy theory and ...
's "Doc, note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod", and Scottish poet Alastair Reid
Alastair Reid (22 March 1926, in Whithorn – 21 September 2014, in Manhattan) was a Scottish poet and a scholar of South American literature. He was known for his lighthearted style of poems and for his translations of South American poets Jo ...
's "T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad; I'd assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet."[By Brendan Gill, published in ''Here At The New Yorker,'' (1997, ).]
In English, two palindromic novels have been published: ''Satire: Veritas'' by David Stephens (1980, 58,795 letters), and ''Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo'' by Lawrence Levine (1986, 31,954 words). Another palindromic English work is a 224-word long poem, "Dammit I'm Mad", written by Demetri Martin
Demetri Evan Martin ( el, Δημήτριος Ευάγγελος Μάρτιν, ''Dimitrios Evangelos Martin''; born May 25, 1973) is an American comedian, actor, writer, director, cartoonist and musician. He was a contributor on ''The Daily Show'' ...
. "Weird Al" Yankovic
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic ( ; born October 23, 1959) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, record producer, actor and author. He is best known for creating comedy songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specifi ...
's song "Bob
Bob, BOB, or B.O.B. may refer to:
Places
* Mount Bob, New York, United States
*Bob Island, Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica
People, fictional characters, and named animals
*Bob (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
*Bob (surname ...
" is composed entirely of palindromes.
Other occurrences
Classical music
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions ...
's Symphony No. 47 in G is nicknamed "the Palindrome". In the third movement, a minuet
A minuet (; also spelled menuet) is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in time. The English word was adapted from the Italian ''minuetto'' and the French ''menuet''.
The term also describes the musical form that accompa ...
and trio, the second half of the minuet is the same as the first but backwards, the second half of the ensuing trio similarly reflects the first half, and then the minuet is repeated.
The interlude from Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
's opera ''Lulu
Lulu may refer to:
Companies
* LuLu, an early automobile manufacturer
* Lulu.com, an online e-books and print self-publishing platform, distributor, and retailer
* Lulu Hypermarket, a retail chain in Asia
* Lululemon Athletica or simply Lulu, a C ...
'' is a palindrome, as are sections and pieces, in arch form, by many other composers, including James Tenney
James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal ...
, and most famously Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...
. George Crumb
George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical ...
also used musical palindrome to text paint the Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...
poem "¿Por qué nací?", the first movement of three in his fourth book of Madrigals
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...
. Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
's final composition, ''The Owl and the Pussy Cat'', is a palindrome.
The first movement from Constant Lambert
Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and (alongside Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton) he was a major figure in th ...
's ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
'' Horoscope'' (1938) is entitled "Palindromic Prelude". Lambert claimed that the theme was dictated to him by the ghost of Bernard van Dieren
Bernard Hélène Joseph van Dieren (27 December 188724 April 1936) was a Dutch composer, critic, author, and writer on music, much of whose working life was spent in England.
Biography
Van Dieren was the last of five children of a Dutch Rotterda ...
, who had died in 1936.
British composer Robert Simpson also composed music in the palindrome or based on palindromic themes; the slow movement of his Symphony No. 2 is a palindrome, as is the slow movement of his String Quartet No. 1. His hour-long String Quartet No. 9 consists of thirty-two variations and a fugue on a palindromic theme of Haydn (from the minuet of his Symphony No. 47). All of Simpson's thirty-two variations are themselves palindromic.
''Hin und Zurück'' ("There and Back": 1927) is an operatic 'sketch' (Op. 45a) in one scene by Paul Hindemith, with a German libretto by Marcellus Schiffer. It is essentially a dramatic palindrome. Through the first half, a tragedy unfolds between two lovers, involving jealousy, murder and suicide. Then, in the reversing second half, this is replayed with the lines sung in reverse order to produce a happy ending.
The music of Anton Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stea ...
is often palindromic. Webern, who had studied the music of the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac
Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Netherlandish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin de ...
, was extremely interested in symmetries in music, be they horizontal or vertical. An example of horizontal or linear symmetry in Webern's music is the first phrase in the second movement of the symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...
, Op. 21. A striking example of vertical symmetry is the second movement of the Piano Variations, Op. 27, in which Webern arranges every pitch of this dodecaphonic
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
work around the central pitch axis of A4. From this, each downward reaching interval is replicated exactly in the opposite direction. For example, a G3—13 half-steps down from A4 is replicated as a B5—13 half-steps above.
Just as the letters of a verbal palindrome are not reversed, so are the elements of a musical palindrome usually presented in the same form in both halves. Although these elements are usually single notes, palindromes may be made using more complex elements. For example, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
's composition ''Mixtur
''Mixtur'', for orchestra, 4 sine-wave generators, and 4 ring modulators, is an orchestral composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1964, and is Nr. 16 in his catalogue of works. It exists in three versions: the ...
'', originally written in 1964, consists of twenty sections, called "moments", which may be permuted in several different ways, including retrograde presentation, and two versions may be made in a single program. When the composer revised the work in 2003, he prescribed such a palindromic performance, with the twenty moments first played in a "forwards" version, and then "backwards". Each moment, however, is a complex musical unit, and is played in the same direction in each half of the program. By contrast, Karel Goeyvaerts
Karel August Goeyvaerts (8 June 1923 – 3 February 1993) was a Belgian composer.
Life
Goeyvaerts was born in Antwerp, where he studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, Royal Flemish Music Conservatory; he later studied musical composition, ...
's 1953 electronic composition, ''Nummer 5
''Nummer 5 met zuivere tonen'' (Number 5 with Pure Tones) is a musical work by the Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts, realized at the WDR Studio for Electronic Music in 1953 and one of the earliest pieces of electronic music.
History
A first vers ...
(met zuivere tonen)'' is an ''exact'' palindrome: not only does each event in the second half of the piece occur according to an axis of symmetry at the centre of the work, but each event itself is reversed, so that the note attacks in the first half become note decays in the second, and vice versa. It is a perfect example of Goeyvaerts's aesthetics, the perfect example of the imperfection of perfection.
In classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
, a crab canon
A crab canon (also known by the Latin form of the name, ''canon cancrizans''; as well as ''retrograde canon'', ''canon per recte et retro'' or ''canon per rectus et inversus'')Kennedy, Michael (ed.). 1994. "Canon". The Oxford Dictionary of Musi ...
is a canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
in which one line of the melody is reversed in time and pitch from the other.
A large-scale musical palindrome covering more than one movement is called "chiastic", referring to the cross-shaped Greek letter " χ" (pronounced /ˈkaɪ/.) This is usually a form of reference to the crucifixion; for example, the ' movement of Bach's Mass in B minor
The Mass in B minor (), BWV 232, is an extended setting of the Mass ordinary by Johann Sebastian Bach. The composition was completed in 1749, the year before the composer's death, and was to a large extent based on earlier work, such as a Sanctu ...
. The purpose of such palindromic balancing is to focus the listener on the central movement, much as one would focus on the centre of the cross in the crucifixion. Other examples are found in Bach's cantata BWV 4, ''Christ lag in Todes Banden
"" (also ""; "Christ lay in death's bonds") is an Easter hymn by Martin Luther. Its melody is by Luther and Johann Walter. Both the text and the melody were based on earlier examples. It was published in 1524 in the Erfurt ''Enchiridion'' and in ...
'', Handel's ''Messiah
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; ,
; ,
; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...
'' and Fauré's Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...
.
A table canon
A Table canon is a retrograde and inverse canon meant to be placed on a table in between two musicians, who both read the same line of music in opposite directions. As both parts are included in each single line, a second line is not needed. Bac ...
is a rectangular piece of sheet music intended to be played by two musicians facing each other across a table with the music between them, with one musician viewing the music upside down compared to the other. The result is somewhat like two speakers simultaneously reading the Sator Square
The Sator Square (or the Rotas-Sator Square, or the Templar Magic Square) is a two-dimensional acrostic class of word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome. The earliest Sator squares were found at several Roman-era sites, all in ROT ...
from opposite sides, except that it is typically in two-part polyphony rather than in unison.
Biological structures
Palindromic motifs are found in most genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...
s or sets of gene
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
tic instructions, palindromic motifs are found. The meaning of palindrome in the context of genetics is slightly different, from the definition used for words and sentences. Since the DNA is formed by two paired strands of nucleotides
Nucleotides are organic molecules consisting of a nucleoside and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which are essential biomolecules w ...
, and the nucleotides always pair in the same way (Adenine
Adenine () ( symbol A or Ade) is a nucleobase (a purine derivative). It is one of the four nucleobases in the nucleic acid of DNA that are represented by the letters G–C–A–T. The three others are guanine, cytosine and thymine. Its derivati ...
(A) with Thymine
Thymine () ( symbol T or Thy) is one of the four nucleobases in the nucleic acid of DNA that are represented by the letters G–C–A–T. The others are adenine, guanine, and cytosine. Thymine is also known as 5-methyluracil, a pyrimidine nu ...
(T), Cytosine
Cytosine () ( symbol C or Cyt) is one of the four nucleobases found in DNA and RNA, along with adenine, guanine, and thymine (uracil in RNA). It is a pyrimidine derivative, with a heterocyclic aromatic ring and two substituents attached (an am ...
(C) with Guanine
Guanine () ( symbol G or Gua) is one of the four main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, the others being adenine, cytosine, and thymine (uracil in RNA). In DNA, guanine is paired with cytosine. The guanine nucleoside is called ...
(G)), a (single-stranded) sequence of DNA is said to be a palindrome if it is equal to its complementary sequence read backward. For example, the sequence is palindromic because its complement is , which is equal to the original sequence in reverse complement.
A palindromic DNA sequence may form a hairpin
A hairpin or hair pin is a long device used to hold a person's hair in place. It may be used simply to secure long hair out of the way for convenience or as part of an elaborate hairstyle or coiffure. The earliest evidence for dressing the hai ...
. Palindromic motifs are made by the order of the nucleotide
Nucleotides are organic molecules consisting of a nucleoside and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which are essential biomolecules wi ...
s that specify the complex chemicals (protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...
s) that, as a result of those genetic instructions, the cell
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
Cell may also refer to:
Locations
* Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...
is to produce. They have been specially researched in bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...
l chromosomes and in the so-called Bacterial Interspersed Mosaic Elements (BIMEs) scattered over them. Recently a research genome sequencing project discovered that many of the bases on the Y-chromosome
The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes (allosomes) in therian mammals, including humans, and many other animals. The other is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or abs ...
are arranged as palindromes. A palindrome structure allows the Y-chromosome to repair itself by bending over at the middle if one side is damaged.
It is believed that palindromes are also found in proteins, but their role in the protein function is not clearly known. It has recently been suggested that the prevalence existence of palindromes in peptides might be related to the prevalence of low-complexity regions in proteins, as palindromes frequently are associated with low-complexity sequences. Their prevalence might also be related to an alpha helical
The alpha helix (α-helix) is a common motif in the secondary structure of proteins and is a right hand-helix conformation in which every backbone N−H group hydrogen bonds to the backbone C=O group of the amino acid located four residues ear ...
formation propensity of these sequences, or in formation of proteins/protein complexes.
Computation theory
In automata theory
Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science. The word ''automata'' comes from the Greek word αὐτόματο ...
, a set
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
of all palindromes in a given alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
is a typical example of a language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
that is context-free, but not regular. This means that it is impossible for a computer with a finite amount of memory to reliably test for palindromes. (For practical purposes with modern computers, this limitation would apply only to impractically long letter sequences.)
In addition, the set of palindromes may not be reliably tested by a deterministic pushdown automaton In automata theory, a deterministic pushdown automaton (DPDA or DPA) is a variation of the pushdown automaton. The class of deterministic pushdown automata accepts the deterministic context-free languages, a proper subset of context-free languages. ...
which also means that they are not LR(k)-parsable or LL(k)-parsable. When reading a palindrome from left to right, it is, in essence, impossible to locate the "middle" until the entire word has been read completely.
It is possible to find the longest palindromic substring In computer science, the longest palindromic substring or longest symmetric factor problem is the problem of finding a maximum-length contiguous substring of a given string that is also a palindrome. For example, the longest palindromic substring o ...
of a given input string in linear time
In computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations performed by ...
.
The palindromic density of an infinite word ''w'' over an alphabet ''A'' is defined to be zero if only finitely many prefixes are palindromes; otherwise, letting the palindromic prefixes be of lengths ''n''''k'' for ''k''=1,2,... we define the density to be
:
Among aperiodic words, the largest possible palindromic density is achieved by the Fibonacci word
A Fibonacci word is a specific sequence of binary digits (or symbols from any two-letter alphabet). The Fibonacci word is formed by repeated concatenation in the same way that the Fibonacci numbers are formed by repeated addition.
It is a para ...
, which has density 1/φ, where φ is the Golden ratio
In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0,
where the Greek letter phi ( ...
.
A palstar is a concatenation
In formal language, formal language theory and computer programming, string concatenation is the operation of joining character string (computer science), character strings wikt:end-to-end, end-to-end. For example, the concatenation of "sno ...
of palindromic strings, excluding the trivial one-letter palindromes – otherwise all strings would be palstars.
Notable palindromists
* Dmitry Avaliani (1938–2003)
* Howard W. Bergerson (1922–2011)
* Hugo Brandt Corstius
Hugo Brandt Corstius (29 August 1935 – 28 February 2014) was a Dutch author, known for his achievements in both literature and science.
In 1970, he was awarded a PhD on the subject of computational linguistics. He was employed at the Mathemat ...
(1935–2014)
* Simo Frangén
Simo Juhani Frangén (born 6 September 1963 in Ulvila, Finland) is a Finnish TV presenter and humourist, living in Tampere.
History
Frangén matriculated in 1982 and graduated as a Master of Social Sciences at the University of Tampere in 1990 ...
(b. 1963)
* Pasi Heikura
Pasi Eino Heikura (born 14 April 1963 in Karvia, Satakunta) is a Finnish humorist, musician, writer, television actor and presenter best known for his work on Alivaltiosihteeri.
Heikura hosts the radio program ''Aristoteleen kantapää'' (Arist ...
(b. 1963)
* Velimir Khlebnikov
Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov, better known by the pen name Velimir Khlebnikov ( rus, Велими́р Хле́бников, p=vʲɪlʲɪˈmʲir ˈxlʲɛbnʲɪkəf; – 28 June 1922) was a Russian poet and playwright, a central part of th ...
(1885–1922)
* J. A. Lindon
James Albert Lindon ( – 16 December 1979) was an English puzzle enthusiast and poet specialising in light verse, constrained writing, and children's poetry.
Lindon was based in Addlestone and Weybridge. His poems often won weekly newspaper com ...
(c. 1914–1979)
* Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) best known for devising the palindrome "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!"
* Georges Perec
Georges Perec (; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Holoc ...
(1936–1982)
* Mark Saltveit
Mark Saltveit (born 1961) is a Vermont-based stand-up comedian, palindromist and writer, known for being the first World Palindrome Champion.
Saltveit's interest in wordplay goes back to his childhood, when he and his young brothers would discus ...
(b. 1961)
* Anthony Etherin (b. 1981)
* Su Hui (poet) (fourth century CE)
* Baby Gramps
Baby Gramps is a guitar performer, who, though born in Miami, Florida, has been based in the Northwest U.S. for at least the last 40 years. He is famous for his palindromes. Baby Gramps started performing in 1964 and is still playing profession ...
(active 1964–present)
See also
* Ambigram
An ambigram is a calligraphic design that has several interpretations as written.
The term was coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1983. Most often, ambigrams appear as visually symmetrical words. When flipped, they remain unchanged, or they mutate ...
* Anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
* Ananym
An anadrome is a word whose spelling is derived by reversing the spelling of another word. It is therefore a special type of anagram. There is a long history of names being coined as ananyms of existing words or names for entities related to th ...
* Anastrophe
Anastrophe (from the el, ἀναστροφή, ''anastrophē'', "a turning back or about") is a figure of speech in which the normal word order of the subject, the verb, and the object is changed.
For example, subject–verb–object ("I like ...
, different word order
* Antimetabole
In rhetoric, antimetabole ( ) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed order; for example, "I know what I like, and I like what I know". It is related to, and sometimes considered a special case of, chiasmus.
An antimet ...
* Backmasking
Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional.
Artists have s ...
* "Bob" ("Weird Al" Yankovic song)
* Chiasmus
In rhetoric, chiasmus ( ) or, less commonly, chiasm (Latin term from Greek , "crossing", from the Greek , , "to shape like the letter Χ"), is a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of wor ...
* Constrained writing
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.
Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form.
D ...
* Eodermdrome
* "I Palindrome I
"I Palindrome I" is a song by American alternative rock duo They Might Be Giants. It was the second single from '' Apollo 18'', released in 1992 by Elektra Records.
They Might Be Giants performed the song on ''Late Night with David Letterman'' i ...
" by They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants (often abbreviated as TMBG) is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as a duo, often accompanied by a d ...
* List of English palindromic phrases
A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panama". Following is a list of palindromic phrases of two or more words in the Engl ...
* List of palindromic places
A palindromic place is a city or town whose name can be read the same forwards or backwards. An example of this would be Navan in Ireland. Some of the entries on this list are only palindromic if the next administrative division they are a part o ...
* Mirror writing
Mirror writing is formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the mirror image of normal writing: it appears normal when it is reflected in a mirror. It is sometimes u ...
* '' Palindroma'', a genus of spiders with palindromic species names
* Palindromic number
A palindromic number (also known as a numeral palindrome or a numeric palindrome) is a number (such as 16461) that remains the same when its digits are reversed. In other words, it has reflectional symmetry across a vertical axis. The term ''palin ...
* Palindromic polynomial
In algebra, given a polynomial
:p(x) = a_0 + a_1x + a_2x^2 + \cdots + a_nx^n,
with coefficients from an arbitrary field, its reciprocal polynomial or reflected polynomial,* denoted by or , is the polynomial
:p^*(x) = a_n + a_x + \cdots + a_0x^n = ...
* Pangram
A pangram or holoalphabetic sentence is a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding.
Origins
The ...
* Yreka, California
Yreka ( ) is the county seat of Siskiyou County, California, United States, near the Shasta River; the city has an area of about , most of it land. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 7,807, reflecting a meager increase fro ...
for the palindromic ''Yreka Bakery'' and ''Yrella Gallery''
References
Further reading
* '' Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics''. Greenwood Periodicals et al., 1968–. .
* ''The Palindromist
''The Palindromist'' is a magazine devoted to palindromes, published since 1996. Initially it was published biannually. The frequency switched to irregular. It is edited by Mark Saltveit
Mark Saltveit (born 1961) is a Vermont-based stand-up come ...
''. Palindromist Press, 1996–.
* Howard W. Bergerson. ''Palindromes and Anagrams
''Palindromes and Anagrams'' is a 1973 non-fiction book on wordplay by Howard W. Bergerson.
Content
Over a third of the book is devoted to the study and collection of anagrams. Of the 1169 anagrams Bergerson lists, most are sourced to the f ...
''. Dover Publications, 1973. .
* Dmitri A.Borgman. ''Language on Vacation
''Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities'' is a 1965 book written by Dmitri Borgmann.
Content
Borgmann introduces his book by stating that he hopes it will "elevate recreational linguistics to the same high level of esteem now ...
''. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965.
* Stephen J. Chism. ''From A to Zotamorf: The Dictionary of Palindromes''. Word Ways Press, 1992. .
* Michael Donner. ''I Love Me, Vol. I: S. Wordrow's Palindrome Encyclopedia''. Algonquin Books, 1996. .
External links
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