Everyone knows of a palindrome…But what’s a Levidrome?
The story begins with a six-year-old boy from British Columbia named Levi. One day, Levi realized that there’s no word in the English dictionary for a word that spells a different word when backward. Palindromes — words that are spelled the same way forward and backward, like kayak — already exist and are a fun and quirky trait of language (see our blog post from April 2017 for more palindromes). But what about when a totally different word is created?
Introducing… the Levidrome!
Before the Oxford dictionary will add a new word into the official list of English words, it has to be a word that is commonly used. William Shatner, famous for his role as Captain Kirk on Star Trek, even tweeted about it to try and help little Levi become a dictionary word!
Shatner found the following words: am/ma; now/won; deliver/reviled; debut/tubed; recap/pacer; smart/trams; boy/yob; stab/bats; at/ta; he/eh; saw/was; sway/yaws; mined/denim; keep/peek; flow/wolf; stop/pots; nab/ban; desserts/stressed; reward/drawer.
ELC also thought of: loot/tool; pin/nip; dog/God; loop/pool.
Can you think of any? What about in your language? See what others have come up with by searching #levidrome
