For our first article in 2019 we figure we put together a writeup to acknowledge a parodic reference to a levidrome. As you are aware, a levidrome is a word which creates another word when spelled backwards, such as "rail" and "liar", or "tops" and "spot". William Shatner, a celebrity who is a prominent advocate of the word levidrome came up with an idea for another unique type of word. The concept of his idea is taking a word and flipping it upside down, like the image of the word "swims" you see here. Now, depending on the font, you may actually get a word to appear. And since William (or Bill) came up with the idea, this type of word should be called a "Billidrome" which is a play on the words "levidrome" and "palindrome".
A number of letters stay the same when inverted, such as capital "H", "O", "S" or "Z" but others become different letters, such as lowercase "q" becoming "b", or "p" becoming "d". "N" is unique because capital "N" is still "N", but lowercase "n" becomes "u" when inverted. And if you really push the envelope, a "7" can become an "L", a "3" can become an "E", and a "^" can become a "v"...such as in the words "Love" and "3^o7". There are other letters, numbers and characters which create another letter, number or character when flipped.
Billidrome
Here is a list we have compiled of some Billidromes, using only letters:
(you may notice some of these words are not only billidromes, but also palindromes. There is even one levidrome in the mix, see if you can spot it.)
- mop <=> dow
- pooH <=> Hood
- mold <=> plow
- WHO <=> OHM
- sIlos <=> solIs
- swoop <=> dooms
- wool <=> loom
- pow <=> mod
- slow <=> mols
- wow <=> mom
- mow <=> mow
- sumo <=> owns
- did <=> pip
- sid <=> pis
- pod <=> pod
- suns <=> suns
- swims <=> swims
On a final note thank you William Shatner for having the foresight to not call this new type of word a Willidrome.
If you have any other Billidromes you would like to see on this page, leave us a comment, and we will add it.
As per usual, spread the word with #LEVIDROME, or maybe even, #BILLIDROME?