Etymology

palindrome

P3A1L1I1N1D2R1O1M3E1

Today it means: A word, phrase, number or any other sequence of units which has the property of reading the same forwards as it does backwards, character for character, sometimes disregarding punctuation, capitalization and diacritics. Full definition →

Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Ancient Greek · borrowed fromπαλίνδρομος“running back again”
  2. English todaypalindrome

From Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palíndromos, “running back again”), from πάλιν (pálin, “back, again, back again”) + δρόμος (drómos, “running, race, racecourse”). By surface analysis, palin- + -drome (compare also velodrome and syndrome).

Words from the same roots

Ancient Greekπαλίνδρομος all →

palindromia

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.