Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba | Flash Post 380

Can you please explain that!

Button, now read that headline backwards.

I did.

And?

Arre, it’s the same from both sides!  That’s a two-faced sentence! Do you know of some more?

Here’s another for you: Madam, I’m Adam.

More?

This one’s with numbers.

But the textual ones are way more interesting.

I agree. There’s also a name for them.

There is? What?

Palindromes. The chart above is a numerical palindrome where you will notice that beginning October 9 all the way till October 19 is palandromic.

Are there more textual palindromes?

Let’s see.

The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is the onomatopoeic tattarrattat, coined by James Joyce in Ulysses (1920) for a knock on the door. The Guinness Book of Records gives the title to detartrated, the preterite and past participle of detartrate, a chemical term meaning to remove tartrates.

It’s too complicated and such big words like onoma…what is it? What does it mean?

Its onomatopoeic, Button. Simply put, it means the pronunciation imitates the sound. Knock on that glass door. Does it not sound like tattarattat! Now spell it backwards.

And it spells just the same. How ingenious is that! Tattarattat. Knock, knock.

I have also learnt a new word.

You mean this is the first time you too heard of it?

That’s right. And all because your Dost sent a mail on 9102019 explaining this. This word comes from the Greek word ‘palindromes’ meaning, literally, ‘running back’.