PALINDROMES: The world's longest, oldest & most impressive

If you like wordplay, you'll love this brief guide to palindromes: words and phrases that say the same thing forwards & backwards (think "wow", "RADAR" or... "taco cat").

What's the longest palindrome in English? What's the longest in any language? What's the oldest palindrome we've found? And what does it have to do with the movie Tenet? I'll answer these questions and more.

Including...
🔠 What is the Sator square?
🖊 What is a "palindromist"?
🖊 What was the best palindrome of 2020?
🖊 What palindromes to French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Chinese have to offer?
🖊 What's the longest word with rotational symmetry?
🖊 What's the longest word with reflective symmetry?
🖊 What is a semordnilap?

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==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Intro - What is a palindrome?
0:46 Longest palindrome words in English
1:32 Palindrom phrases - Elba & Panama
3:05 Palindrome poem - Dammit I'm Mad
3:30 The palindromists
4:00 2020's best palindromes
4:49 World's oldest palindrome - Sator square
5:53 Tenet and the Sator square
6:25 World's oldest - Le Grand Palindrome
7:05 Spanish, Italian, Russian & Chinese
8:00 Symmetrical words
9:05 Semordnilap
9:22 Goodbye

[tocaat]

My favourite (found on line several years ago) is:
Gert, I saw Ron avoid a radio van, or was it Reg?

Another favourite was given to me by a friend:
Doc note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.

The most cringeworthy one I found on line was:
Did I strap red nude, red rump, also slap murdered underparts? I did! 😫

A few others, courtesy of Bill Bryson (some clever, some gratuitous):

Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
Sex at noon taxes.
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.
Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.

[thewebexpert]

Most impressive (to me, at least) is "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Bob." Not only is the title a palindrome, the song is constructed exclusively out of palindromes - which he, the creative genius that he is, has caused to rhyme with near-perfection throughout the entire song.

[amilgz]

There's a Galician book called “A torre da derrota” (The tower of defeat), by Gonzalo Navaza. It's a poetry book, and all of the poems are palindromes. 😊

[dopebeatstudios]

One example of a Greek palindrome which has a real meaning and is not only words
"νίψον ανομήματα μη μόναν όψιν"
which translates as
"wash off your sins, not only your face"

[apoolplayer]

Is it crazy how saying sentences backwards creates backwards sentences saying how crazy it is?

[friederike]

Hi Rob,
German here :)
2nd: Otto of course is a name, which means... Otto. Haha. No, it actually has a "real" meaning which is "eight". Originating in Italian (or is it even Latin?). And that again opens up a whole other world with "8" having such beautiful symmetry horizontally and vertically - as well as allowing for endless movement.
1st: "Pils mit Bier treibt im Slip" actually does make sense. "Treiben" has various meanings - one being " to float" but another one being "to urge". So, it means "A lot of beer makes you have to pee".
Lastly: I really enjoy your videos! Thank you!!

[FinFan]

Finnish has A LOT of palindromes and a few quite popular radio hosts used to have a 'palindrome of the week'. Few classics are "saippuakauppias" (a soap sales man) "innostunut sonni" (exited bull) and my favorite that i can remember "iso ja hatara ruma rata hajosi" (a large and unstable ugly railway collapsed). The last one makes perfect sense!

[daviddeming]

For forty years I worked as a bus driver and would often spend my time at stop lights creating palindromes. Working from an already created palindrome, "Eva can I stab bats in a cave?" Here we have a nested palindrome. If you insert a verb/object pair that is itself a palindrome you build new ones, all starting with "Eva can I ... ending with ... in a cave?" So one could insert "stir grits" or even "evade Dave" /// Very cool to see Graham Maddocks entry in these comments: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.

[RobPudWilliams]

The marketplace outside the palace in Ankh Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld is called Sator Square. Now I know why.

[Ghiaman]

I've always thought the word for palindromes should have been a palindrome in itself. Knowing 'Palinilap' is now actually a thing, that leaves the ever powerful sounding 'semordromes', though a single one would have to be an 'emordrome' to preserve this quality

[epiendless]

The song 'Tenet' by Heilung is based on the Sator square.
The melody itself is somehow derived from the square. I'm not sufficiently musically literate to understand what they did, but I'm sure it's frightfully clever.

[worldsedge]

On Netflix is a new Korean language show, “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” about a young woman attorney with autism spectrum disorder. Her name, Woo Young-Woo is palindromic, “우영우”. She also has a habit when introducing herself by noting her name is the same coming or going and then rattles off a list of palindromes. These are translated in subtitles as “Kayak, deed, rotator…” obviously, these English palindromes don’t work in Korean. She actually says “기러기, 토마토, 스위스…” (goose, tomato, Swiss…)

[owhite]

most underrated channel on youtube. this guy is the Brian Cox of the english language

[SimonCharman]

“Step on no pets” is one that comes to mind when taking about palindromes. It is also useful advice … especially if you own a hamster. Love your channel. I have binge watched.

[WingedAsarath]

I've loved the SATOR square ever since I first learnt about it as a kid! It roughly translates to: "The sower, Arepo, holds the wheels at work". One really interesting fact about it is that, despite the earliest known square predating 79AD, the letters can be rearranged to spell out PATER NOSTER in a cross shape, with two pairs of letters left over: A and O for alpha and omega - the beginning and the end.

[Dinorigami]

Your intros are always top notch 😮
(So is the rest of the video of course)

[deniseg]

My grandfather was born in 1881 so in 1961 we had a birthday cake for him and I noticed how nice to be able to read it upside down. I was 9 and have been fascinated with palindromes since. Thanks for your channel!

[wassholm]

Last fall I had the opportunity to work on a production of a play called "Are we not drawn onward to new erA". The whole show is actually a palindrome, created with the camera and projection, so you watch the whole thing forwards live, and then continue to watch the recording played backwards, back to the start. It's made by a Belgian company called Ontroerend Goed.

[RFToob]

My Nephew, at 7 years old, told me about palindromes. He mentioned ‘Racecar’. I thought that was impressive…so yes, that is my favorite one. Enjoyed this. Cheers!

[missmabelbasset]

I once had the immense pleasure of a few hours, and a few glasses of wine with Howard Bergerson who wrote the 1, 034 letter palindromic narrative poem "Edna Waterfall". Which is maybe the longest palindromic poem that actually tells a story, as opposed to a series of words type thing (even if it reads a little weird especially by the standards of the average english speaker). So that one is my favorite.

I also like Mr owl ate my metal worm.