What is a word-turncoat? A little about palindromes

Symmetry in words and phrases is a curious phenomenon, although it can not always be noticed. For ages and millennia, all the 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 that have symmetry. They can be read as usual - 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-turn-up". Usually this term means linguistic constructions. But sometimes it can also be about flip-numbers, figures and even notes! In general cases, these are words or phrases. For example, "tramp", "Anna" and the longest palindrome in Russian - "rotator". But in fact, everything is not so 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

In addition to the basic meaning and type, the word-turncoat may represent something else. When people are already tired of making such words, but they have not yet taken up the phrases, geometric figures have gone into action . There were so-called "whirlwinds" - phrases written, for example, on a cylinder, which could be read equally when rotating both clockwise and counterclockwise. There is a famous example associated with a similar kind of palindrome. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky once gave his beloved Lila Brik a ring. On the inside of the decoration was engraving. Only three letters - L, Yu, B, which were also her initials. But with the rotation, they formed into an infinite "love."

Another species, which is also referred to as palindromes, are words, with repetition forming another. It is easier to consider this with examples: the ring of a socle , the bank of a bank, and so on.

Another borderline form of the palindrome is a word or combination, which when read from left to right has one meaning, and in the opposite direction another: "the world is comfortable," "nose," "city," etc.

There are even more complex examples: bilingual, with a vertical turn and other transformations, because people like to invent all new uses of the language.

In linguistics

First of all, the speech will, of course, go about how a word-flip-flop or the same phrase is used in one or another language. In general, the history of palindromes goes back to ancient times. The first such phrase is the Latin Sator Arepo tenet opera rotos, which translates as "The Arepoy's Sower with difficulty holds the wheels." Usually this palindrome is written in the form of a square, and you can read it not only from left to right and vice versa, but also vertically. It is believed that this phrase is about 2500 years old. However, since that time a lot has changed. A lot of new examples have appeared, and this applies not only to the Russian language, but also to other European and Eastern languages.

Palindroms are not only interested in linguists, but also in mathematics. According to their calculations, even if the vocabulary is limited, theoretically, the number of words and phrases-inversions can be infinite. So, what are the words-the changeovers?

Examples

There are people who are fond of writing palindromes. Not always the rules of word formation, the structure of sentences, and the semantic load remain unchanged. This is forgivable, because when you increase the length of a word-turn-up word or phrase becomes more difficult. Fortunately, there are extremely witty examples, often even whole poems.

In russian language:

• Argentina is attracted by a Negro.
• A whale at sea is a romantic.
• Anna was lying desirous.
• He put the boar on eggplant.
• And what about cabbage soup?
• The wilds are a world of misfortunes.
• I'm a mug at the field.
• Honey is thirsty.
• Spring is the chance of Eu.
• And the moon was drowning.

In English:

• Racecar.
• Tacocat.
• Madam, I'm Adam.
• Live not on evil.

Poetic forms can be very successful:

I and you are God, the ego of being.
I and you are Bach of the echo of being.
I and you are the bud of music at being.
Me and you are a ballet of the body of being .

This is part of the work, owned by Elena Katsyuba, who created a whole vocabulary of palindromes. In general, amateurs among writers, scientists, mathematicians , etc. were among the fans: 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 the word-changer saippuakivikauppias in Finnish. This term denotes the seller of soap, and the most interesting is that this is a completely common and common language unit!

Palindromes in other areas

Do not think that this concept refers only to words and phrases. Any other recording methods can also lead to palindromes. Programming languages, mathematics, music, even to some extent, fine arts - in all these areas you can find "flips". Such examples can be found in the works of Mozart or Mosheles.

Separately it is necessary to say about biology. In the DNA there are areas 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.