Anadrome

An anadrome^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[a] is a word or phrase whose letters can be reversed to spell a different word or phrase. For example, desserts is an anadrome of stressed. An anadrome is therefore a special type of anagram. The English language is replete with such words.

Thumb — An animation of the anadrome of *wolf* and *flow*.

The word anadrome comes from Greek anádromos (ἀνάδρομος), "running backward", and can be compared to palíndromos (παλίνδρομος), "running back again" (whence palindrome).

There is a long history (dating at least to the fourteenth century, as with Trebor and S. Uciredor) of alternate and invented names being created out of anadromes of real names; such a contrived proper noun is sometimes called an ananym, especially if it is used as personal pseudonym. Unlike typical anadromes, these anadromic formations often do not conform to any real names or words. Similarly cacographic anadromes are also characteristic of Victorian back slang, where for example yob stands for boy.

Remove ads

Examples

The English language has a very large number of single-word anadromes, by some counts more than 900.^[3] Some examples:

two letters: am ↔ ma; eh ↔ he; ew ↔ we; no ↔ on
three letters: bro ↔ orb; dog ↔ god; gum ↔ mug; nip ↔ pin
four letters: edit ↔ tide; evil ↔ live; liar ↔ rail; part ↔ trap
five letters: denim ↔ mined; knits ↔ stink; lever ↔ revel; peels ↔ sleep
six letters: denier ↔ reined; diaper ↔ repaid; drawer ↔ reward; pupils ↔ slip-up
seven letters: amaroid ↔ diorama; deliver ↔ reviled; gateman ↔ nametag
eight letters: desserts ↔ stressed

An anadrome can also be a phrase, as in no tops ↔ spot on. The word redrum (i.e., "red rum") is used this way for murder in the Stephen King novel The Shining (1977) and its film adaptation (1980).^[11]

Anadromes exist in other written languages as well, as can be seen, for example, in Spanish orar ↔ raro or French l'ami naturel ("the natural friend") ↔ le rut animal ("the animal rut").

Invented anadromes

More information derivation, description ...

anadrome	derivation	description	references
daraf	farad	a unit of elastance equal to the reciprocal farad
emirp	prime	a prime number that results in a different prime when its digits are reversed
gnip gnop	ping pong	reminiscent of the other tabletop game
mho	ohm	a unit of electrical conductance which is the reciprocal of an ohm; now known by its official SI name "siemens", although mho is still sometimes used	^[12]
namyats	Stayman	bridge convention invented by Sam Stayman, who also invented the Stayman convention.	^[13]
nimda	admin	the computer worm assumed admin-like powers.
tink	knit	to unknit
xallarap	parallax	converse microlensing effect
yrneh	henry	A unit of measurement for reciprocal electrical inductance.

Close

Ananyms and anadromic names

More information ananym, derivation ...

ananym	derivation	description	type	references
Adanac	Canada	a tourist cottage in Ontario	proper name
Adanac[s]	Canada	a Canadian lacrosse team	team name
Adaven	Nevada	ghost town	proper name
Airegin	Nigeria	composer Sonny Rollins is African American	song name
Allerednic	Cinderella	A "riches to rags" tale as opposed to Cinderella's rags to riches. Used by Jonathan Gershuny of high-achieving women whose careers stall after marriage.	proper name	^[14]
Alucard	Dracula	borne by various characters inspired by Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897)	proper name	^[15]
Ani Lorak	Karolina	stage name of Karolina Kuiek	pseudonym
Azed	Deza	pen name of Jonathan Crowther, after Spanish inquisitor Diego Deza	pseudonym	^[16]
[C. W.] Ceram	Marec	pen name of German journalist K. W. Marek (latinized Marec)	pseudonym	^[17]
Dioretsa	asteroid	asteroid with retrograde orbit	proper name	^[18]
Dnoces	"second"	Apollo program joke by Grissom, after Edward H. White II	proper name	^[19]
Ebbot [Lundberg]	Tobbe	Tobbe is the usual hypocoristic of his given name Torbjörn	pseudonym
Eivets Rednow	Stevie Wonder		album name	^[15]
elgooG	Google	reverse-spelling search engine	company name
Navi	Ivan	Apollo program joke by Virgil Ivan Grissom	proper name	^[19]
Erewhon	"nowhere"	A utopia and the title of an 1872 novel by Samuel Butler. The digraph <wh> is not reversed. Many names within the book are also ananyms.	proper name	^[5]^[20]
Erised	"desire "	The Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone bears the inscription in reverse: "I show not your face but your heart's desire."	proper name	^[21]
Esio Trot	"tortoise"	children's book by Roald Dahl	book name
Essiac	Rene Caisse	tea formula invented by Rene Caisse	product name
Etnaviv	Vivante	open-source driver for Vivante GPU	product name
Regor	Roger	Apollo program joke by Grissom, after Roger B. Chaffee	proper name	^[19]
Гярб вечнълс (Giarb vechnals)	Слънчев бряг (Slanchev briag, "Sunny Beach")	Bulgarian Cyrillic ananym	proper name
Harpo [Productions]	Oprah	Oprah Winfrey's media company	company name	^[5]
Klim	"milk"	a brand of powdered milk sold by Nestlé, early ads featuring the slogan "Spell it backwards"	product name	^[22]
Kroz	Zork	homage to older computer game	product name
Livic	"civil [engineering]"	trade newspaper, "a reflection of Civil Engineering"	company name	^[23]
Llamedos	"sod 'em all"	in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (compare Llareggub)	proper name
Llareggub	"bugger all"	in Under Milk Wood	proper name	^[5]
MAPS (Mail Abuse Prevention System)	"spam"	reverse backronym	organization name
Nagirroc	Corrigan	historic home in Florida, after the owner's last name	proper name
Namor	"Roman"	comic book character named by Bill Everett	proper name
Nevaeh	"heaven"	feminine given name	proper name
Nevar	"raven"	In the 2002 TV series Raven, Nevar is the nemesis of the main character. It is also a minor character in an episode of Teen Titans Go! (see Bizarro World). (It is also a possible answer to Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter riddle in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.)	proper name	^[24]
Niloak Pottery	"kaolin"	material used in products	company name
Nitsuga	Agustín	stage name of Agustín Barrios-Mangoré	pseudonym
Nogard	"dragon"	character in Alan F. Beck art series The Adventures of Nogard & Jackpot	proper name	^[25]
Nomad	Damon	named for founding member Damon Rochefort	band name
Nomar [Garciaparra]	Ramon	for his father, Ramon Garciaparra	proper name
Nujabes	Seba Jun	stage name of Jun Seba	pseudonym
OAT (organizing autonomous telecomms)	TAO (The Anarchy Organization)	OAT stands for "Organizing Autonomous Telecomms", a reverse backronym of its former name TAO, "The Anarchy Organization"	organization name
Posdnuos	"sound sop"	stage name of Kelvin Mercer	pseudonym	^[26]
Rednaxela Terrace, Hong Kong	Alexander	believed to have been originally named after a Mr. Alexander, who partially owned the street, but reversed due to a clerical error	proper name	^[27]^[28]
Rekkof Aircraft	Fokker	Rekkof aircraft are based on Fokker designs. Also Rekkof Restart. Now Fokker Next Gen.	company name	^[29]
Rellim	Miller	a farm in West Virginia, named for founder Paul Miller	proper name
Revilo	Oliver	pen name of cartoonist Oliver Christianson	pseudonym
Revilo [P. Oliver]	[Revilo P.] Oliver	Revilo was philologist Revilo P. Oliver's name at birth	proper name
Ridan	Nadir	named after another horse	proper name
로꾸거 (Rokuko)	거꾸로 (gokkuro)	backwards for Korean for "backwards"	song name
Rotanev	Venator	after Niccolò Cacciatore (Nicolaus Venator in Latin)	proper name	^[30]
Seltaeb	Beatles	the Beatles' merchandising company	company name	^[15]
Senim Silla	"All is mines."	stage name of hip hop artist Ross Rowe; "mines" is African-American Vernacular for "mine"	pseudonym	^[31]
Senrab [Street]	Barnes	a street in Stepney (whence Senrab F.C.), near Barnes Street	proper name
Sevas Tra	"Art saves."	debut album of Otep	album name
Soma [Records]	Amos	after owner Amos Heilicher	company name
Strebor	Roberts	altered from the company's original name, the Roberts Company	company name
Sualocin	Nicolaus	after Niccolò Cacciatore (Nicolaus Venator in Latin)	proper name	^[30]
Tesremos	Somerset	pen name of Derrick Somerset Macnutt	pseudonym	^[32]
Tebloc	Colbert	place in Mississippi, named for a local family, whose name is found in many places, and thus altered "to avoid further repetition"	proper name	^[33]
Trebor	Robert	14th-century composer whose real name may have been Robert	pseudonym
Trebor	Robert	Trebor is a confectionary founded by Robert Robertson	company name
Trebor	Robert	Robert Trebor is the stage name of actor Robert Schenkman.	pseudonym
Trebor and Werdna	Robert [Woodhead] and Andrew [C. Greenberg]	characters in Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord computer game named after its programmers	proper name
Trugoy [the Dove]	"yogurt"	stage name of David Jude Jolicoeur, due to his fondness for yogurt	pseudonym	^[34]
Xvid	DivX	a competitor	company name
Yarg	Gray	Allan and Jenny Gray revived the recipe	product name
Yellek	Kelley	named for R. J. Kelley, trainmaster at the passing point	proper name
[Stanley] Yelnats	Stanley [Yelnats]	the main character in Louis Sachar's novel Holes	proper name
Yen Sid	Disney	the powerful sorcerer in Fantasia (1940), whose apprentice Mickey Mouse causes mayhem after borrowing his master's hat	proper name	^[35]

Close

Many jazz titles were written by reversing names or nouns: Ecaroh inverts the spelling of its composer Horace Silver's Christian name. Sonny Rollins dedicated to Nigeria a tune called "Airegin".

A number of Pokémon species, such as the snake Pokémon Ekans and Arbok (cobra backwards with a K), have anadromic names.

Remove ads

Notes

Also called (often humorously) a semordnilap^[5] or emordnilap,^[6] and sometimes called a levidrome.
- Semordnilap is an anadrome of palindromes. According to author O. V. Michaelsen in his 1997 book Words at Play, semordnilap was probably first used by recreational linguist Dmitri Borgmann, cited by Martin Gardner in the revised edition of Charles Carroll Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961).^[7]
- Levi Budd, a boy from Toronto, Canada, coined levidrome in 2017, and there were attempts to get it recognized by Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionary.^[8] In 2018, Oxford replied that it is still not ready.^[9] As of 2021, it is still being requested.^[10]

Remove ads

References

Room, Adrian (2010-07-26). Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4373-4. Retrieved 15 January 2011.

[1]
Brunton, Finn (November–December 2010). "Roar so wildly: Spam, technology and language" (PDF). Radical Philosophy (164): 6. Retrieved December 13, 2024. Bifacial text, a kind of anadrome which reads with two distinct meanings when read forward or backward.
[2]
Kragh, Helge (2024). The Names of Science: Terminology and Language in the History of the Natural Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 255. As the first case of a retrograde asteroid [Dioretsa] was named as an anadrome, namely asteroid spelled backwards.
[3]
Sutherland, Denise (2020). Solving Cryptic Crosswords for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. p. 61. These sorts of two-way words are called anadromes, and roughly 900 of them exist in everyday English.
[4]
Luschnig, Cecelia Eaton; Luschnig, Lance J. (2017). Etyma II: An Introduction to Vocabulary Building from Latin and Greek. Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books. p. 307. The other side of Palindrome is semordnilap. [...] These are also called anadromes.
[5]
updated, Arika Okrent last (April 29, 2014). "9 words created by spelling other words backwards". theweek.
[6]
"Is 'Emordnilap' a Real Word?". Snopes. 13 December 2014.
[7]
Bombaugh, Charles Carroll (1961). Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature. Dover Publications. p. 345.
[8]
"What is a "levidrome?" Merriam-Webster recognizes new word in honor of little boy". November 27, 2017.
[9]
"Latest word on 'levidrome': Oxford says it's not ready, but linguist begs to differ". Times Colonist. October 14, 2018.
[10]
"A Victoria 10-year-old created a word for a linguistic oddity. Over the past four years, it's come to mean so much more". Capital Daily.
[11]
Lederer, Richard (1998). The Word Circus: A Letter-perfect Book. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Inc. p. 89.
[12]
"Definition of MHO". www.merriam-webster.com.
[13]
"Namyats (4C, 4D, 4H, 4S) - Bridge Bidding Convention". BridgeHands. Petaluma, California. 22 January 2011. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
[14]
Gershuny, Jonathan (1999). "Time Budgets, Life Histories and Social Position". Quality and Quantity. 33 (3): 277–289. doi:10.1023/A:1004648804214. S2CID 142779389.; Langdon, Julia (13 August 2000). "Cherie Booth: Now you see her, now you don't". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2019-04-23. Retrieved 23 April 2019.; Hay, Hannah Furness (31 May 2013). "Hay Festival 2013: Working women are Cinderella in reverse". Retrieved 23 April 2019.
[15]
Honeycutt, Curtis. "Grammar Guy: A look back at backward words". Savannah Morning News.
[16]
Room (2010), p.40
[17]
Room (2010), p.99
[18]
"20461 Dioretsa (1999 LD31)". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
[19]
Harland, David Michael (2007). The first men on the moon: the story of Apollo 11. Springer. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-387-34176-7. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
[20]
Balfour Daniels, R. (Winter 1969). "Names in the Fiction of Samuel Butler (1835-1902)". The South Central Bulletin. 29 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press, South Central Modern Language Association: 129–132. doi:10.2307/3187333. JSTOR 3187333.
[21]
Jeelani, Hasina (November 16, 2021). "What we can learn about self-love from the Mirror of Erised in 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'". Vogue India.
[22]
Smedley, Emma (1920). The school lunch: its organization and management in Philadelphia. Emma Smedley. p. 171.
[23]
"Livic at three years old". 23 March 2007.
[24]
"The Story Behind Lewis Carroll's Unsolvable Riddle". Mental Floss. September 12, 2021.
[25]
Alan F. Beck, The Adventures of Nogard & Jackpot , 2009. ISBN 978-1449519391
[26]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/05/18/de-la-souls-mind-bending-rap/af8f9493-1894-41e2-88f2-ed2057247d0b/
[27]
Yanne, Andrew; Heller, Gillis (2009). Signs of a Colonial Era. Hong Kong University Press. p. 143. ISBN 9789622099449.
[28]
"Stories behind Hong Kong street names: Rednaxela Terrace and its famous resident". South China Morning Post. 8 July 2016.
[29]
"Fokker's Back in the Airplane-Building Game - CBS News". CBS News. 10 March 2010.
[30]
Ridpath, Ian; Tirion, Wil (2007). Stars and planets: the most complete guide to the stars, planets, galaxies, and the solar system. Princeton University Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-691-13556-4.
[31]
Crazy Illa Wulf (May 2007). "Senim Silla: return of a star". platform8470. Gistel, Belgium. Archived from the original on 27 August 2008. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
[32]
Room (2010), p.517
[33]
Phelps, Dawson A.; Edward Hunter Ross (Fall 1952). "Names Please: Place Names along the Natchez Trace" (PDF). The Journal of Mississippi History. 14. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi Historical Society: 240. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-10-07. Retrieved 2011-01-15.
[34]
"De La Soul co-founder Trugoy the Dove dead at 54". AP News. February 12, 2023. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
[35]
Koehler, Dorene (2017). The Mouse and the Myth: Sacred Art and Secular Ritual of Disneyland. Indiana University Press. p. 161.

Remove ads

External links

The dictionary definition of anadrome at Wiktionary

[11] Also called (often humorously) a semordnilap^[5] or emordnilap,^[6] and sometimes called a levidrome.
Semordnilap is an anadrome of palindromes. According to author O. V. Michaelsen in his 1997 book Words at Play, semordnilap was probably first used by recreational linguist Dmitri Borgmann, cited by Martin Gardner in the revised edition of Charles Carroll Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961).^[7]

Levi Budd, a boy from Toronto, Canada, coined levidrome in 2017, and there were attempts to get it recognized by Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionary.^[8] In 2018, Oxford replied that it is still not ready.^[9] As of 2021, it is still being requested.^[10]

[2] Semordnilap is an anadrome of palindromes. According to author O. V. Michaelsen in his 1997 book Words at Play, semordnilap was probably first used by recreational linguist Dmitri Borgmann, cited by Martin Gardner in the revised edition of Charles Carroll Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961).^[7]

[3] Levi Budd, a boy from Toronto, Canada, coined levidrome in 2017, and there were attempts to get it recognized by Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionary.^[8] In 2018, Oxford replied that it is still not ready.^[9] As of 2021, it is still being requested.^[10]

[1] [1]
Brunton, Finn (November–December 2010). "Roar so wildly: Spam, technology and language" (PDF). Radical Philosophy (164): 6. Retrieved December 13, 2024. Bifacial text, a kind of anadrome which reads with two distinct meanings when read forward or backward.

[2] [2]
Kragh, Helge (2024). The Names of Science: Terminology and Language in the History of the Natural Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 255. As the first case of a retrograde asteroid [Dioretsa] was named as an anadrome, namely asteroid spelled backwards.

[Sutherland-3] [3]
Sutherland, Denise (2020). Solving Cryptic Crosswords for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. p. 61. These sorts of two-way words are called anadromes, and roughly 900 of them exist in everyday English.

[4] [4]
Luschnig, Cecelia Eaton; Luschnig, Lance J. (2017). Etyma II: An Introduction to Vocabulary Building from Latin and Greek. Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books. p. 307. The other side of Palindrome is semordnilap. [...] These are also called anadromes.

[the_week-5] [5]
updated, Arika Okrent last (April 29, 2014). "9 words created by spelling other words backwards". theweek.

[6] [6]
"Is 'Emordnilap' a Real Word?". Snopes. 13 December 2014.

[7] [7]
Bombaugh, Charles Carroll (1961). Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature. Dover Publications. p. 345.

[foxlevi-8] [8]
"What is a "levidrome?" Merriam-Webster recognizes new word in honor of little boy". November 27, 2017.

[9] [9]
"Latest word on 'levidrome': Oxford says it's not ready, but linguist begs to differ". Times Colonist. October 14, 2018.

[10] [10]
"A Victoria 10-year-old created a word for a linguistic oddity. Over the past four years, it's come to mean so much more". Capital Daily.

[12] [11]
Lederer, Richard (1998). The Word Circus: A Letter-perfect Book. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Inc. p. 89.

[13] [12]
"Definition of MHO". www.merriam-webster.com.

[14] [13]
"Namyats (4C, 4D, 4H, 4S) - Bridge Bidding Convention". BridgeHands. Petaluma, California. 22 January 2011. Retrieved 10 May 2016.

[15] [14]
Gershuny, Jonathan (1999). "Time Budgets, Life Histories and Social Position". Quality and Quantity. 33 (3): 277–289. doi:10.1023/A:1004648804214. S2CID 142779389.; Langdon, Julia (13 August 2000). "Cherie Booth: Now you see her, now you don't". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2019-04-23. Retrieved 23 April 2019.; Hay, Hannah Furness (31 May 2013). "Hay Festival 2013: Working women are Cinderella in reverse". Retrieved 23 April 2019.

[sav-16] [15]
Honeycutt, Curtis. "Grammar Guy: A look back at backward words". Savannah Morning News.

[17] [16]
Room (2010), p.40

[18] [17]
Room (2010), p.99

[MPC-object-19] [18]
"20461 Dioretsa (1999 LD31)". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 20 November 2018.

[Harland2007-20] [19]
Harland, David Michael (2007). The first men on the moon: the story of Apollo 11. Springer. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-387-34176-7. Retrieved 22 February 2011.

[21] [20]
Balfour Daniels, R. (Winter 1969). "Names in the Fiction of Samuel Butler (1835-1902)". The South Central Bulletin. 29 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press, South Central Modern Language Association: 129–132. doi:10.2307/3187333. JSTOR 3187333.

[22] [21]
Jeelani, Hasina (November 16, 2021). "What we can learn about self-love from the Mirror of Erised in 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'". Vogue India.

[23] [22]
Smedley, Emma (1920). The school lunch: its organization and management in Philadelphia. Emma Smedley. p. 171.

[24] [23]
"Livic at three years old". 23 March 2007.

[25] [24]
"The Story Behind Lewis Carroll's Unsolvable Riddle". Mental Floss. September 12, 2021.

[26] [25]
Alan F. Beck, The Adventures of Nogard & Jackpot , 2009. ISBN 978-1449519391

[27] [26]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/05/18/de-la-souls-mind-bending-rap/af8f9493-1894-41e2-88f2-ed2057247d0b/

[28] [27]
Yanne, Andrew; Heller, Gillis (2009). Signs of a Colonial Era. Hong Kong University Press. p. 143. ISBN 9789622099449.

[scmp1987092-29] [28]
"Stories behind Hong Kong street names: Rednaxela Terrace and its famous resident". South China Morning Post. 8 July 2016.

[30] [29]
"Fokker's Back in the Airplane-Building Game - CBS News". CBS News. 10 March 2010.

[RidpathTirion2007-31] [30]
Ridpath, Ian; Tirion, Wil (2007). Stars and planets: the most complete guide to the stars, planets, galaxies, and the solar system. Princeton University Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-691-13556-4.

[32] [31]
Crazy Illa Wulf (May 2007). "Senim Silla: return of a star". platform8470. Gistel, Belgium. Archived from the original on 27 August 2008. Retrieved 22 February 2011.

[33] [32]
Room (2010), p.517

[34] [33]
Phelps, Dawson A.; Edward Hunter Ross (Fall 1952). "Names Please: Place Names along the Natchez Trace" (PDF). The Journal of Mississippi History. 14. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi Historical Society: 240. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-10-07. Retrieved 2011-01-15.

[trugoy_obituary-35] [34]
"De La Soul co-founder Trugoy the Dove dead at 54". AP News. February 12, 2023. Retrieved February 13, 2023.

[36] [35]
Koehler, Dorene (2017). The Mouse and the Myth: Sacred Art and Secular Ritual of Disneyland. Indiana University Press. p. 161.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[a]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[5]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]

[27]

[28]

[29]

[30]

[31]

[32]

[33]

[34]

[35]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

Examples

Invented anadromes

Ananyms and anadromic names

See also

Notes

References

External links

Wikiwand in your browser!

Anadrome