(Now Read That Backwards)

If, like me, you spend too much time on social media, you might’ve seen some recent posts about the month of May having “palindromic dates.”

A palindrome, as you may know, is any word, number or other sequence that’s the same backwards as forwards. Simple examples include the year 2002, or the words pop, deed and kayak.

Since May is the fifth month, all of the individual dates from 5/22/25 through 5/29/25 were palindromes — as long as you ignore the slashes, which is common protocol for this phenomenon.

In the same way, linguistic palindromes generally disregard capitals, punctuation and word-breaks. Thus, one of the most famous palindromes — which has jestingly been called the earliest as well — runs as follows: “Madam, I’m Adam.”

And if that was indeed said to Eve (rather unlikely, given their ignorance of Modern English!), then it can also be rendered in slightly longer form: “Madam, in Eden I’m Adam.”

Now there are a few beautifully designed linguistic palindromes that work even if you maintain the word-breaks. Perhaps the most elegant of these is “Rats live on no evil star” — though, like many palindromes (including the one in my headline), it makes little sense and is unlikely to ever be said by any human being.

Only slightly more possible is the palindrome wittily ascribed to Napoleon on his exile to a Mediterranean island: “Able was I ere I saw Elba” — which also preserves identical word-breaks.

Likewise historically improbable: “Zeus sees Suez.”

And I just love the simpler “Dennis sinned” … or “Desserts, I stressed.”

According to Rod Evans’ excellent word-loving book Tyrannosaurus Lex (Perigee, 2012), the first-ever English palindrome also maintains word-breaks when read backwards. It has been credited to John Taylor — who, says Evans, “used an acceptable seventeenth-century spelling of dwell and an ampersand: ‘Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel.’”

Single-word palindromes, of course, don’t have this word-break issue.

A few of these include level, minim, radar, redder, refer, rotator, sagas, sexes, solos, stats and tenet — along with such names as Anna and Hannah.

It’s often been asserted redivider is the longest one-word palindrome in English; but my Word program redlined that — because it is not found in most good dictionaries. Similarly, the plant-word kinnikinnick would be a great candidate if it weren’t for that blasted C near the end!

Probably the coolest one-worder is: racecar.

So you can see that when it comes to single-word length, this phenomenon seems to max out at seven letters. (See also reviver and the obscure murdrum.)

Now as for palindromes involving sentences — well, length seems to be a non-issue there.

Among the most beloved is an uber-cool phrase coined to honor the building of one world-famous waterway: “A man, a plan, a canal — Panama!”

(While it may refer to Teddy Roosevelt, the phrase itself was — according to A-I Overview — not actually formulated until 1948.)

So we’ll postpone most of these full-sentence palindromes till next week — though we’ve seen a few in this piece so far.

As a teaser, I confess a fondness for the supposed dueling phrase, “Draw, O coward!” Same for the hilariously nonsensical, “Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak.”

My all-time favorite — which I’ll share next week — involves both salami and lasagna.

Hope that leaves you hungry for more.