beetiger: (cartoonbee)
beetiger ([personal profile] beetiger) wrote2004-01-24 11:53 am

*smile*

I feel a lot better now. Thank you for all of the pets.

I used the letter links to spell out "plethora" for Rhys, and hung it on his playmat. He pulled off half of it and started doing a little wiggly dance. I wsn't sure quite what it was but then I looked in his hand and realized it must be a "hora".

Then I used the links to spell "diaper" for him. [profile] bard_bloom came home and looked at the toy and said, "Repaid? What, are you teaching him about finances?" O ye wordplayers and linguists, is there a special name for a word that spells another word backwards? Also, do you know any other good ones (without any duplicate letters) that I should make for the baby to play with?

Come to think of it, that's another one. pets/step. In the area I grew up in there was a store called "Pets Pets Pets" but we always called it "Pets Pets Step" because the sign looked like this:

P----------S
E--------T
T------E
S----P
PETS


Tonight [profile] bard_bloom has to go out and do Important Ritual Stuff, so baby and I are home alone. Bwah hah hah. I hope he goes to sleep early, I'm going to eat popcorn and watch a DVD, woo hoo hoo.

Art Garfunkel got busted for pot. That's kind of a bummer, since I was listening to his kids' album at the time I found out. On the other hand, the fine is $100, which is less than I paid for the ticket to his last concert, which had a lot of other people at it, so I guess it's okay.

Um, I think I better stop now.

[identity profile] kai-ta-loipa.livejournal.com 2004-01-24 10:35 am (UTC)(link)
Some people use "anadrome" (anagram + palindrome) but that isn't a grammatically recognized word, and I believe it is also the French word for a type of fish. I'm pretty sure that there is no term for a word that spells another when reversed; it is simply a type of anagram. (It would actually make more sense if the former were the definition, because "anagram" means "to write backward".)

star -> rats, live -> evil, now -> won, net -> ten, not -> ton.... I can't think of any others offhand, but playing Text Twist on Yahoo! games usually produces several. :)

[identity profile] terrycloth.livejournal.com 2004-01-24 10:43 am (UTC)(link)
desserts -> stressed
pal -> lap
pots -> stop
remit -> timer
and -> dna
a mall -> llama?

anadrome

[identity profile] williamtp.livejournal.com 2005-10-02 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
You are right that "anadrome" hasn't been used it enough to make it into the dictionaries yet with this meaning but the way English works is that dictionaries look at usage and add words when they become established.

I've been trying to establish this word with this meaning for some time with slow success as your post demonstrates.

The word is completely sound in terms of its derivation (from the ancient Greek "ana" meaning "back" and "dromos" meaning "running") and was used by Douglas St. Paul Barnard in his 1963 book "Anatomy of the Crossword".

Anadromic fish swim the wrong way up rivers - a different sense of the word but exactly the same etymology.

My favourite anadromes are "Naomi" -> "I moan" and "Evian" -> "Naive". The latter is particularly apt considering the people out there who are willing to pay so much for small bottles of water.