Palindromes have always fascinated me. A palindrome is traditionally defined as a word, verse, or sentence which reads the same, backwards or forwards– such as ‘Madam’. Numbers, dates and music can also be in the form of a palindrome.

The word ‘palindrome’ was coined from Greek roots palin (back) and dromos (way, direction) by English writer Ben Jonson in the 1600s, meaning to run back again. Palindromes are also called sotadics, from their reputed inventor, Sotades, a scurrilous Greek poet of the third century BC. Palindromes exist in Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Finnish, Japanese, Hungarian, Estonian,and Sanskrit and many other languages.

Irish also has its palindromes. One is: “A Noinín, níl an rí anocht ar Rath Conair, na linn. In Iona.” (“Nettle, the king is neither tonight on Conair’s fort, nor with us. In Iona.”)

‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’ is a well-known palindrome, attributed to Napoleon.

Palindromes date back at least to 79 A.D., as the palindromic Latin word square ‘Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas’ (shown below) was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, buried by ash in that year. The same words read both horizontally and vertically.

Spaces, punctuation and case are usually ignored, as in ‘A man, a plan, a canal, Panama’. Some other palindromes take the word as the unit, as in ‘Girl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy, sees boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl’.
Musical palindromes

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No.47 in G (1772) is nicknamed the Palindrome. The third movement, minuet and trio is a musical palindrome. This clever piece goes forward twice and backwards twice and arrives back at the same place. The interlude from Alban Berg’s opera Lulu is a palindrome, as are sections and pieces by many other composers, most famously Béla Bartók. The Stone Roses’ first album contains the songs ‘Waterfall’ and ‘Don’t Stop’. The latter is essentially the former performed backwards. There are many, many more musical examples.

In 2003 the city of San Diego, California commissioned sculptor Roman DeSalvo and composer Joseph Waters (pictured left) to create a public artwork in the form of a safety railing on the 25th Street overpass at F and 25th Streets.

The result, Crab Carillon, is a set of 488 tuned chimes that can be played by pedestrians as they cross the overpass. Each chime is tuned to the note of a melody, composed by Waters. The melody is in the form of a palindrome, to accommodate walking in either direction.

If you think I am making this up, you can listen online to this strange music at www.sandiego.gov/arts-culture/sound/crab1arrangement.mp3
Longest single word palindromes

The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is the onomatopoeic tattarrattat, coined by James Joyce in ‘Ulysses’ (1922) for a knock on the door. The Finnish word saippuakivikauppias (soap-stone vendor) is claimed to be the world’s longest palindromic word in everyday use.

Koortsmeetsysteemstrook (fever measuring system strip) is probably the longest palindrome in Dutch, and Kuulilennuteetunneliluuk (bullet flightway tunnel hatch) is the longest palindrome in Estonian.

Longest palindromes in English

Alastair Reid was a dedicated palindrome writer who summed up the quest for a good palindrome in this way:
The dream which preoccupies the tortuous mind of every palindromist is that somewhere within the confines of the language lurks the Great Palindrome, a nutshell which not only fulfils the intricate demands of the art, flowing sweetly in both directions, but which also contains the Final Truth of Things.

If you have all the time in the world, try Google, which gives a mere 1,120,000 references for palindrome!