Levidromes hit the main stage over four years ago. When it did, there was an article published by Alexander Atkins, called Levidrome: The Word That Launched a Thousand Erroneous Stories.
The jist of this article essentially said that there was already a word to describe what levidrome is wanting to define, and that word is semordnilap.
Semordnilap is palindromes spelled backwards.
Semordnilap made its first appearance in 1961 when it appeared as an annotation in the book Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature, by C.C Bombaugh.
This word was also pointed out in the video which Lucky / Levi produced to promote their levidromic cause.
As pointed out in the video and in other articles, semordnilap has not been accepted by the vast majority of linquists or the population at large.
Levidrome. Semordnilap. But are there other words as alternates?
Google is your friend.
If you check the internet for semordnilap, you should come across a few articles.
In a Today I Found Out article which was written in 2015, it mentions a number of potential words which could have the same definition as levidrome.
These are:
- backronyms
- volvograms
- heteropalindromes
- semi-palindromes
- half-palindromes
- reversgrams
- mynoretehs
- recurrent palindromes
- reversible anagrams
- word reversals
- reversal pair
- anagram
- reversion
- inversion
- antigram
- anadromes
From the The Island English Tutor article, anadromes, heteropalindromes and palingrams were mentioned. The author, AJ Mittendorf, admits making up the word palingrams. The article, which appears under the site's word play section had no date but appears to have been published late 2014 or early 2015.
I was quite impressed with this article because it actually had a list of 189 levidromes. Hmmm, an odd number, how is that possible since levidromes are always in pairs?
Some of these suggested words listed above could possibly be in the running for a word with a different definition when the spelling is reversed.
However, if one looks more closely at these suggestions, some of them already exist in the dictionary but the definition doesn't quite fit for a levidrome.
Other words are a play on the word palindrome. Indeed, a levidrome is a palindrome but a special type of palindrome because of its unique definition. Many of these plays on the word palindrome (including semordnilap) were not accepted and do not appear in the dictionaries. Levidrome too is composed of the word palindrome because of the nature of the word, ie. spelled backwards.
Of the words you have seen today, which is your favorite? We may be a little biased, but we like levidrome.