Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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noun
A word, phrase, or sentence that has the property of forming another word, phrase, or sentence when its letters are reversed. A semordnilap differs from a palindrome in that the word or phrase resulting from the reversal is different from the original word or phrase.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
A reverse spelling of palindromes. "Semordnilap", according to author O. V. Michaelsen in his 1997 book Words at Play, was probably first used by recreational linguist Dmitri Borgmann, cited by Martin Gardner in the revised edition of Charles Carroll Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961) http://books.google.com/books?id=f4kNAQAAIAAJ&q=borgmann. The underlying concept (but not the term) is found at least as far back as Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno (1889). Semordnilap is also autological; that is, it is a self-describing word, as the word semordnilap is itself a semordnilap.
Across languages
2 source translations are retained for this English entry.
