What is the world’s longest palindrome?
I don’t know what the longest palindromic sentence is.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest palindromic word is *saippuakivikauppias/i]. It’s a Finnish word for a seller of lye. The longest English word is redivider. In American English releveler is the same length, however in England it’s spelled releveller.
Carpe hoc!
There are a lot of very long palindromes, but most of them don’t make much sense. The longest palindrome I’ve ever seen that actually made some sense was this one (rather clever, I thought, but I have no idea who wrote it):
“T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: gnat-dirt upset on drab pot toilet.”
After a little web-surfing I found this 540 word variation on “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama”
- A man, a plan, a caret, a ban, a myriad, a sum, a lac, a liar,
a hoop, a pint, a catalpa, a gas, an oil, a bird, a yell, a vat,
a caw, a pax, a wag, a tax, a nay, a ram, a cap, a yam, a gay,
a tsar, a wall, a car, a luger, a ward, a bin, a woman, a vassal,
a wolf, a tuna, a nit, a pall, a fret, a watt, a bay, a daub,
a tan, a cab, a datum, a gall, a hat, a fag, a zap, a say, a jaw,
a lay, a wet, a gallop, a tug, a trot, a trap, a tram, a torr,
a caper, a top, a tonk, a toll, a ball, a fair, a sax, a minim,
a tenor, a bass, a passer, a capital, a rut, an amen, a ted,
a cabal, a tang, a sun, an ass, a maw, a sag, a jam, a dam, a sub,
a salt, an axon, a sail, an ad, a wadi, a radian, a room, a rood,
a rip, a tad, a pariah, a revel, a reel, a reed, a pool, a plug,
a pin, a peek, a parabola, a dog, a pat, a cud, a nu, a fan, a pal,
a rum, a nod, an eta, a lag, an eel, a batik, a mug, a mot, a nap,
a maxim, a mood, a leek, a grub, a gob, a gel, a drab, a citadel,
a total, a cedar, a tap, a gag, a rat, a manor, a bar, a gal,
a cola, a pap, a yaw, a tab, a raj, a gab, a nag, a pagan, a bag,
a jar, a bat, a way, a papa, a local, a gar, a baron, a mat, a rag,
a gap, a tar, a decal, a tot, a led, a tic, a bard, a leg, a bog,
a burg, a keel, a doom, a mix, a map, an atom, a gum, a kit,
a baleen, a gala, a ten, a don, a mural, a pan, a faun, a ducat,
a pagoda, a lob, a rap, a keep, a nip, a gulp, a loop, a deer,
a leer, a lever, a hair, a pad, a tapir, a door, a moor, an aid,
a raid, a wad, an alias, an ox, an atlas, a bus, a madam, a jag,
a saw, a mass, an anus, a gnat, a lab, a cadet, an em, a natural,
a tip, a caress, a pass, a baronet, a minimax, a sari, a fall,
a ballot, a knot, a pot, a rep, a carrot, a mart, a part, a tort,
a gut, a poll, a gateway, a law, a jay, a sap, a zag, a fat,
a hall, a gamut, a dab, a can, a tabu, a day, a batt, a waterfall,
a patina, a nut, a flow, a lass, a van, a mow, a nib, a draw,
a regular, a call, a war, a stay, a gam, a yap, a cam, a ray,
an ax, a tag, a wax, a paw, a cat, a valley, a drib, a lion,
a saga, a plat, a catnip, a pooh, a rail, a calamus, a dairyman,
a bater, a canal–Panama.*
Carpe hoc!
you win, the palindrome I was thinking of is;
‘go hang a salami i’m a lasagna hog’
go wings!
In the “Giving credit where credit is due” category: The 540 word Panama palindrome above was written by Dan Hoey with the help of a Unix computer program.
His site is:
gopher://wiretap.spies.com/00/Library/Article/Language/palindro.txt
Sorry, to get the above link to work, you will have to delete the “http://” off the front of it after you click on it.
There was a palindrome thread a couple of months back in the MPSIMMS forum that I put this in, but nobody knew the rest of it.
A friend who’ve I’ve fallen out of touch with used to know a very long palindrome (composed without the aid of a computer) that began and ended with:
“Do good, I? No! Evil I deliver…reviled, I live on. I do, O God!”
Where the elipses are in the above, there were about 5 or 6 long sentences that made absolute sense - I just don’t remember them.
Don’t know how many total words there were in the thing, but it was damned impressive.
Well, I always thought a true palindrome was supposed to make sense – thus the beauty of “A man, a plan, a canal – Panana!” It seems to me to be far easier to run together palindromic phrases that don’t make sense.
panana?
The palindrome of Bolton would be notloB.
OK, folks, time to give credit where credit is due. According to a creative writing website for which I’ve unfortunately lost the URL:
In 1980, David Stephens wrote a 58,000 letter palindrome “Satire: Veritas.” Lawrence Levine wrote a palindromic novel of 31,957 words, *Dr. Awkward and Olson in Oslo * in 1986.
There you have it.
Insert commas after “palindrome” and “Oslo.”