If something reads the same backwards as it does left to right, that is called a palindrome.

As we saw last week in “Weird Words,” palindromes can be numerical — like all the dates from 5/20/25 through 5/29/25. Of course, those work only if you overlook the slashes, which is what most palindromers do — along with punctuation and word-spacing in such sentences as Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw? … or Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak.

Now some palindromes do preserve space-breaks between words: Regal lager. He did, eh? No devil lived on. Able was I ere I saw guns. Strap on no parts. Step on no pets.

(And speaking of pets: My Webb editor, Steph, cheered last week’s column by mentioning her palindromic feline companion — the neatly named Tacocat!)

Some writers have carefully constructed sentences where the words (not the letters) are to be read backwards. Examples includes James A. Lindon’s clever question, “You can cage a swallow, can’t you — but you can’t swallow a cage, can you?” Or even the Three Musketeers’ famous “All for one and one for all!”

According to the sizable entry at Wikipedia, palindromes can also be found in classical music and biological structures (especially DNA). But undoubtedly the most beloved form is the “Eliot” and “Kay” type listed above, where letters march backward to form the exact same phrase or sentence.

Last week I shared one of the most famous, written in reference to a certain Central American project: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!

Below are more — with considerable help from Wikipedia and Rod Evans’ excellent book Tyrannosaurus Lex. (Evans also provided the Lindon and Dumas quotes above.)

Here we go:

Ah, Satan sees Natasha. Campus motto: Bottoms up, Mac. Dennis and Edna sinned. Do geese see God? If I had a hi-fi. Lepers repel. Lonely Tylenol. Lived on decaf, faced no devil. (Another one that niftily preserves word-breaks!)

My gym taxes sex at my gym. (And here we must admit that many of these palindromic statements would never actually be said — like, for instance, the doctrinally impossible Ma is a nun, as I am. A good deal more likely is the similar, Ma is as selfless as I am.)

Speaking of similar pairs, we also have: Name now one man, and Name no one man — a set whose reversibility is sustained simply by dropping its exact middle letter.

Others:

Never odd or even. No sir, a war is on. OJ nabs Bob’s banjo. Poor Dan is in a droop (provided under “palindrome” in the Random House Collegiate Dictionary). Pull up if I pull up. Rise to vote, sir. Senile felines. Sit on a potato pan, Otis! (Another very unlikely statement….)

Solo gigolos. So many dynamos! Sup not on pus. (Blech — advice taken … even while the word-breaks work in this one, too!) Todd erases a red dot. A Toyota’s a Toyota. Too hot to hoot. Too bad I hid a boot. UFO tofu (title of an early Bela Fleck album). Was it a car or a cat I saw? We panic in a pew. Won’t lovers revolt now?

And let’s finish with a few of the longer ones I’ve seen:

Some men interpret nine memos.

Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic!

Are we not drawn onward, we few? Drawn onward to new era?

I madam, I made a radio! So I dared. Am I mad? Am I?

Marge lets Norah see Sharon’s telegram.

Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver.

Doc note: I dissent. A fast never prevents fatness. I diet on cod.

So yeah — some of these are a trifle “out there.” Happily, my all-time favorite makes a good deal more sense; and on top of that, it neatly reverses right at the semi-colon:

Go hang a salami; I’m a lasagna hog.

Lots more are available on line; so if you want to dip in there because you’re too scared to try writing your own — then I say: Draw, O coward!