Symmetry in words and phrases is a curious phenomenon, although it is not always noticeable. For centuries and millennia, more and more new entertaining categories have appeared: anagrams, ambigrams, pantograms, etc. But in this case we will talk about such a concept as palindrome words, examples of which are very interesting. What is it?
Essence
Palindromes are words and phrases with symmetry. They can be read in the usual way - from left to right, and vice versa, and the meaning does not change at all. This explains the name itself: in Greek, it means "running back." In Russian, a palindrome is also often called a "word-changer". Usually, this concept refers to linguistic constructions. But sometimes we can also talk about shifting numbers, drawings and even notes! In general cases, these are words or phrases. For example, "stomp", "Anna" and the longest palindrome in Russian is "rotator". But it's actually not that simple, because people like to play with words, which allows them to come up with new ways to see the unexpected in the ordinary.
Varieties
Besides the main meaning andkind, the word-shifter can represent something else. When people were already tired of composing such words, but they had not yet taken up phrases, geometric shapes were used. So-called "whirlwinds" appeared - phrases written, for example, on a cylinder, which could be read equally when rotating both clockwise and counterclockwise. There is a famous example related to a similar kind of palindrome. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky once gave his beloved Lilya Brik a ring. There was an engraving on the inside of the decoration. Only three letters - L, Yu, B, which were also her initials. But when they rotated, they formed an endless "love".
Another variety, which is also referred to as palindromes, are words that, when repeated, form another one. It is easier to consider this with examples: ring base ring, ka jar ban, etc.
Another borderline form of a palindrome is a word or combination that, when read from left to right, has one meaning, and another in the opposite direction: "the world is comfortable", "nose", "city", etc.
There are even more complex examples: bilingual, with a vertical spread and other transformations, because people like to come up with new uses for the language.
In linguistics
First of all, of course, we will talk about how the word-shifter or the same phrase is used in a particular language. In general, the history of palindromes goes back to ancient times. The first such phrase is considered to be the Latin Sator Arepo tenet opera rotos, whichtranslates as "The Sower of Arepo holds the wheels with difficulty." Usually this palindrome is written as a square, and it can be read not only from left to right and vice versa, but also vertically. It is believed that this phrase is about 2500 years old. However, much has changed since that time. A lot of new examples have appeared, and this applies not only to the Russian language, but also to other European and Oriental languages.
Palindromes are of interest not only to linguists, but also to mathematicians. According to their calculations, even if the vocabulary is limited, theoretically, the number of words and turnaround phrases can be infinite. So what are flip words?
Examples
There are people who are addicted to composing palindromes. At the same time, the rules of word formation, the structure of sentences are not always observed, and the semantic load does not remain unchanged. This is forgivable, because as the length increases, it becomes more and more difficult to compose a shifter word or phrase. Fortunately, there are also extremely witty examples, often even entire poems.
In Russian:
- Argentina beckons a black man.
- Whale at sea romantic.
- Anna lay desirable.
- The boar pressed the eggplant.
- Is cabbage soup food?
- Debri is a world of troubles.
- I am a burdock by the field.
- Crave honey.
- Spring is a chance Ev.
- And the moon was sinking.
In English:
- Racecar.
- Tacocat.
- Madam, I'm Adam.
- Live not on evil.
Poetic forms can bevery successful:
Me and you are God, the ego of being.
Me and you are Bach of the echo of being.
Me and you are the bud of notes at being.
Me and you are ballet of the body of being.
This is part of a work written by Elena Katsyuba, who created a whole dictionary of palindromes. In general, among those who like to break their heads over combinations of letters were very famous writers, scientists, mathematicians, etc.: M. Bulgakov, A. Fet, A. Voznesensky, N. Ladygin, G. Derzhavin, V. Khlebnikov and many others.
By the way, the longest word in the world is saippuakivikauppias in Finnish. This concept denotes a soap seller, and the most interesting thing is that this is a completely common common language unit!
Palindromes in other areas
Do not think that this concept refers only to words and phrases. Any other writing methods can also lead to palindromes. Programming languages, mathematics, sheet music, even to some extent the fine arts - in all these areas you can find "shifters". Similar examples can be found in the works of Mozart or Moscheles.
Separately worth mentioning about biology. There are regions in DNA that are also called palindromes. Here they have a functional load - they allow you to increase the amount of encrypted information without increasing the number of nucleotides.
