The history of words forward and backward
I remember seeing a beautiful girl during my freshman year of college. It took me a while, but I worked up the courage to approach her. She told me her name was “Hannah.” I smiled and cleverly told her she was a palindrome. She said I was wrong — that she was Presbyterian — and walked away from me.
That ended our brief courtship. Believe it or not, my lifelong fascination with syntax has rarely been effective with the opposite sex.
A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same forwards and backwards. Many people already know this. Words like madam, level, radar and racecar are palindromes. And it works for phrases too. Some that make sense like “Dennis sinned.” And some that make no sense at all, such as “wet sanitary rat in a stew.”
In fact, if it wasn't for palindromes, pharmaceutical companies might go out of business because they regularly release drugs like Xanax, Raxar, Lexxel, Lozol and Merrem.
If you are a regular reader of this column, you already know that I love weird language idiosyncrasies. And because verbiage dorks like myself can never leave well enough alone, did you know that palindromes have a secret little brother that few people know about.
If you spell palindromes backwards, you get semordnilap, which, believe it or not, is a real term used to define when a word is spelled backwards and has a totally different meaning. For instance, the word “straw” backwards is “warts.” The same goes for “diaper” and “repaid,” or “deliver” and “reviled.”
In fact, one of the most successful companies in the world used these alphabetic antics to climb to the top of the media world. “Oprah” Winfrey's production company is called “Harpo” studios.
But this sort of marketing sorcery was not invented by “Oprah,” as early linguists learned how to harness the semordnilap. It can be traced back to the 1930s when “Serutan” was introduced, which is possibly the genesis of subliminal advertising.
For three decades, this product infiltrated our homes with stealth-like movement. Even the most trusted man in America in the 1950s was a pitch man for it. “The Lawrence Welk Show” would regularly have its star stop the music during the program to encourage the population to go ahead and guzzle some “Serutan,” which was a laxative that surreptitiously was being pushed as “natures” way. It was a diabolical scheme to make the whole world regular without us even knowing it.
And the result of taking this medicine ... a four-letter palindrome that starts with and ends with a “P.” Talk about coming full circle.
From now on, take a careful look at any items you regularly buy or simply cannot live without. Do we really love it, or is there something more than meets the eye? Don't believe me? Then why is it that anytime we are “stressed” out, we crave “desserts?”
Coincidence? I think not!
Dave McElhinny is the North Bureau Chief for the Tribune-Review. Reach him at dmcelhinny@tribweb.com or via Twitter @DaveMcTrib.
