Palindromes

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Audiendus
Wordmaster
Posts: 908
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK

Palindromes

Postby Audiendus » Fri May 15, 2020 9:20 pm

You are invited to make up palindromic sentences, or palindromic combinations of sentences. Here are some of mine:

Raw fog of war.
Mac's top nurses run pot scam.
No, Seville's mad damsel lives on.
No parts or clever Arsenal bar togs, eh? He's got Rab Lane's rare velcro strap on.

bnjtokyo
Lexiterian
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2016 7:16 pm

Re: Palindromes

Postby bnjtokyo » Sun May 24, 2020 8:23 pm

I'm envious of people who can dream up palindromes. I can only find a few words that spell another when written backwards. However, you might find the following kid's joke in Japanese interesting. It works like this:
Kid A says "Say 'tebukuro' backwards"
('tebukuro' is the Japanese word for 'glove.' Japanese is a syllabic language so to say a word backwards means to pronounce the syllables in reverse order. So te-bu-ku-ro backwards becomes
Rokubute
Kid B says "Rokubute"
So now Kid A hits Kid B 6 times because
'roku' is 'six' and 'bute' is the 'te' (connective or non-final form) of the verb 'butsu,' 'hit'
So "rokubute" is an informal/familiar/casual way to say "hit me six times"

bnjtokyo
Lexiterian
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2016 7:16 pm

Re: Palindromes

Postby bnjtokyo » Sat May 30, 2020 11:08 pm

"Able was I ere I saw Elba" The earliest appearance of this palindrome that I could find in print was 1848 when it was credited to one J. T. R. in The Gazette of the Union, Golden Rule, and Odd Fellows' Family Companion.

The same source also mentions the following near palindromes
Lewd did I live & evil I did dwell
This phrase is credited to "the 'water poet,' Taylor"
J. R. T. also supplied
Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns

The earliest appearance of the word "palindrome" itself was in "The New Monthly Magazine" in 1821. This article mentions the "lewd did I live" near palindrome mentioned above (it may have been a perfect earlier when "dwell" was deemed properly spelled with one "l"). It also mentions a 455-line poem written in 1802 in ancient (meaning classical?) Greek. I can't read Greek and it does not appear to me to be a palindrome, but what do I know? Since I can't cut and paste the sample, here is a link.
https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=JjE ... %22&f=true

Audiendus
Wordmaster
Posts: 908
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Palindromes

Postby Audiendus » Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:10 pm

It is, of course, more difficult to make the spaces as well as the letters symmetrical. The best I can do at present is the following:

No pay? God, pets! I spot Bateman. No tub, but on nametab tops I step. Dog, yap on!

brogine
Lexiterian
Posts: 229
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:41 pm

Re: Palindromes

Postby brogine » Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:01 pm

Equal to ‘Able was I . . .’ in aptness (if not word separation) is:
A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!’
The ‘man’ might be any of several or no one in particular. Most of the palindromes you see are forced and kind of silly.


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