Phx The Great Big Thread of Useless Information or the Seinfeld Thread about Nothing!

AKASAKA is a district in Chuo, Tokyo [Joseph Hernandez].

 

The Finnish word SAIPPUAKIVIKAUPPIAS (a soapstone seller) is the longest known palindrome in any language according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It is claimed that two other Finnish palindromes are SAIPPUAKUPPINIPPUKAUPPIAS (soap cup trader) and SOLUTOMAATTIMITTAAMOTULOS (the result from a measurement laboratory for tomatoes) although technically the latter is a compound of four words. The Swedish word PORTUGALRALLARLAGUTROP (22 letters) is listed in Guinness, Swedish 1989 edition, but is not found in dictionaries.

 

According to Maarten van Muijen, the longest palindrome in Dutch is PARTERRESERRETRAP, which is translated "stairs from the main floor to a glass-covered terrace." A reader of this page provided a longer Dutch palindrome, KOORTSMEETSYSTEEMSTROOK, which she translates as "fever measure system strip." Hans Timp says both of these words, and another he provided, NEPPARTERRETRAPPEN, are made for palindroming and are not found in dictionaries. He says the longest real Dutch word which is a palindrome is MEETSYSTEEM, meaning "measuring system."

 

Miroslav Sedivy writes, "There is one excellent Czech (also Slovak) palindrome unique by its usage: TAHAT (even vertically symmetrical). It means 'pull' in sense of pulling a door to open it. So if you see it on a transparent sticker on a glass door (and I've seen many such doors in Czechoslovakia), it's interesting to see people pulling doors from both sides..."

 

Common everyday English palindromes (including a few very common abbreviations) are A, AHA, BB, BIB, BOB, BOOB, BUB, CIVIC, DAD, DEED, DEIFIED, DENNED, DEWED, DID, DUD, DVD, EKE, ERE, EVE, EWE, EYE, GAG, GIG, HAH, HUH, I, KAYAK, KOOK, LEVEL, MA?AM, MADAM, MOM, MUM, NOON, NUN, PAP, PCP, PEEP, PEP, PIP, POOP, POP, PULL-UP, PUP, PUT-UP, RACECAR, RADAR, REDDER, REFER, REPAPER, REVIVER, ROTATOR, ROTOR, SAGAS, SEES, SHAHS, SIS, SOLOS, SOS, STATS, TAT, TENET, TNT, TOT, TOOT , TUT, TUT-TUT, WOW, and ZZZ.

 

Common personal names include ADA, ANNA, ASA, AVA, BOB, CEC (for Cecil), ELLE, EVE, HANNAH, LIL, NAN, OTTO, VIV, and VYV

 

REDIVIDER is the name of a Canadian band. The word does not appear in the OED2 and an Internet search in March 2000 failed to find a single use of the word, except for its appearance in lists of palindromes or as the name of the band.

 

RELEVELER is the name of a rock band. However, the word is not found in the OED2 and does not appear to exist on the Internet except as the name of the rock band or as an example of a palindrome.

 

DELEVELED is used in fantasy role playing games to indicate that a character has lost a level. Several usages with this meaning can be found on the Internet.

RPGers beware!

 

Long coined palindromes which do not appear in dictionaries and for which no usages have been found in Web searches include DEGARAGED, DEROTATORED, DEROTORED, DESUFFUSED, REGARAGER, REROTATORER, REROTORER, and RESUFFUSER.

 

The Hebrew alphabet has three palindromic letter names: MEM, NUN, and WAW. A variant spelling of waw is VAV and a variant spelling of another letter name, teth, is TET.

 

KRK is a Croatian island [Juozas Rimas].

 

very interesting . . .

SOS by ABBA was a hit recording with a palindromic title and artist.
Palindromic album titles include Ole ELO by the Electric Light Orchestra,
LIVE EVIL by Black Sabbath and by Miles Davis,
EVIL LIVE by The Misfits,
UFO TOFU by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, AJA by Steely Dan,
and AOXOMOXOA by the Grateful Dead.
AHA is a Norwegian pop group.

 

Palindromic drug names include XANAX, RAXAR, LEXXEL, LOZOL, and MERREM [Dennis Miller].

 

YREKA BAKERY is a famous palindrome, the name of an actual bakery in Yreka, California, which closed in the early 1960s. There is now a deli with the same name. The location of the original bakery is now occupied by an art gallery named yrellaGallery. An Internet search reveals the existence of an album titled Yreka Bakery by a band called Pep Squad. Mark D. Lew wrote in 2001, "About four years ago, on a road trip up I-5, I made a point of stopping in Yreka to look for the famous deli. It was Sunday evening, so it was closed, but I can attest that it does indeed exist. On Hwy 24, between Walnut Creek and Oakland (where I live), there is a building with 'Elite Tile' displayed in large letters, easily visible from the freeway." Dan Tilque provides the name of a refiner in El Dorado, Arkansas, LION OIL.

 

In Swedish, NATURRUTAN ("nature square") is the title of a nature TV program. And a somewhat contrived palindrome in Swedish is PORTUGALRALLARLAGUTROP ("Portugal"=the country, "rallarlag"=a team of navies, "utrop"=exclamation, outcry) [Fredrik Viklund].

 

LON NOL (1913-1985) was a general and political leader in Cambodia.

 

LEON NOEL was born on Christmas Eve in 1908 and became a child celebrity in his hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana. He was included in Robert L. Ripley's Ripley's Believe It or Not. Noel lived most of his life in St. Petersburg, Fla. He died in Largo, Fla., on Christmas Day 1999.

 

RAMON LLULL (fl. AD 1300) was a Catalan mystic and poet whose writings helped to develop the Romance Catalan language and widely influenced Neoplatonic mysticism throughout medieval and 17th-century Europe. He is also called Raymond Lully.

 

GLYCYLGLYCYLGLYCYLGLYCINE has a 19-letter internal palindrome from the first to the last C and another 19-letter palindrome from the first G to the last G [Nick Papuga].

 

The longest palindromic cluster embedded in an English word is composed of the first eleven letters in SENSUOUSNESS [Charles Turner].

 

ABABA a genus of beetles
ADINIDA a group of protozoans belonging to the order Dinoflagellata. (W3)
AEAEA the Island of Dawn in Homer's Odyssey
AETEA a marine Bryozoan
AFOFA a Portuguese dance (Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, 1941)
AIBOHPHOBIA the fear of palindromes
AIDEMEDIA a genus of Hawaiian finches
AILIA and AINIA genera of fish
AITIA plural of aition, a tale devised to explain the origin of a religious observance. (W3)
AJAJA AJAJA one of various scientific names for the tropical American roseate spoonbill. Also called AJAJA and AIAIA
AKA AKA a rural district near Auckland, New Zealand
ALLAALLA Hausa (from Rex Gooch, Word Ways)
ALLENELLA a genus of molluscs
ALULA the bastard wing on a bird. (MWCD10)
ARAGARA a genus of flies
ARARA a genus of birds
ARRAARRA US Indian tribe (from Rex Gooch, Word Ways)
ARRAWARRA a town in coastal New South Wales, Australia (Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places, Word Ways)

 

BACAB one of 4 Mayan brother gods that hold up the sky. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991)
BEEB informal term for the BBC (OED2)
BIIB a crimson fruit-dove from the Caroline Islands in the west Pacific Ocean
BURGGRUB the name of three villages in Bavaria (Encarta World Atlas, Word Ways)

 

CAMMAC copper halfpenny in use in Ireland in the early 19th century (The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, 1911)
CAYAC an iguana native to the Caribbean island of Carriacou
CILDLIC old form of 'childlike' (An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Word Ways)
CINENIC related to cinene, a terpene derived from cineol. (OED2)

 

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