Levidrome News

This website was started after we were inspired by the video about levidromes posted by Levi Budd and his father. There have been other videos about levidromes as well, from songs to creative projects. However, those videos are specifically about levidromes. This post is going to talk about something a bit different.

The definition of a levidrome is A word with a new definition when the spelling is reversed. So levidromes are words. If we have a video and play it, it also provides a story or a specific meaning. However, if the video is reversed and the meaning of the video is completely different than the original "forward" version, well that makes that video a levidromic video.

A levidromic video is a video with a different meaning when played in reverse.

Here are a couple of examples of levidromic videos.

Fire

Boat

There is a large collection of similar levidromic videos on Reddit in their reversegif section.

Enjoy!

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Our website has been mobile friendly since we launched. However, effective today, we are Mobile first. To accomplish this, we re-did our images and website layout to cater towards mobile devices first, then fall back to "big screen" devices like PCs and iMacs. For the most part, your shouldn't notice much of a difference if you visit levidromelist.com on a PC but if you visited with a tablet or phone, the browsing experience should be better.

We also did some geeky stuff on the server itself. I won't bore you with the details but it basically tells your device / PC not to reload each page every time you visit our site (caching). Overall, a better browsing experience.

Enjoy!

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We crunched the data - the Complete Works of William Shakespeare - and came up with a startling conclusion - William Shakespeare was a levidromist!

Everyone has heard of William Shakespeare. A poet, playwright and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. He is also regarded as the world's greatest dramatist.

And now for us to introduce some drama. He was also a levidromist.

Back in late 2018, we introduced a tool to our website called "levidrome finder". This tool allows the reader to enter in some text (up to 100000 characters at a time) and it will find all the levidromes and any matching levidromic pairs. Using the tool at the backend (with no restrictions imposed), we ran it against the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's works consists of 39 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 narrative poems. They can be viewed at http://shakespeare.mit.edu/. We captured all this "data" and ran our tool against it.

Here is the summary of the results:

1. There are 195 individual pieces of work in the Complete Works of Shakespeare
2. There are 221567 lines of text
3. There are 5834856 individual characters (including punctuation)
4. There are 931523 words
5. There are 110180 levidromes (from our english list)
6. There are 265208 levidromes (from our english-insane list)

From the english-insane list results, there are 265208 levidromes. Doing the math, 265208 / 931523 = 28.5 %. From the english list results...that is 110180 / 931523 = 11.8 %

Now depending on which results your prefer, Shakespeare's works are made up of either 11.8% or 28.5% levidromes. Either way, that is a lot of levidromes.

And naturally his works also produced levidromic pairs. We have included links to the results:

1. shakespeare-english.txt
2. shakespeare-english-insane.txt

Based on those figures, we can clearly say Shakespeare was a levidromist since better than 1 out of every 4 words is a levidrome. Way to go Shakespeare! Or should I call you William. Heck, we are friends now....Bill.

This is no surprise to us (I know, I used the word "startling" before but that was to add to the drama). After all, we are all levidromists. We wrote an article and did a snapshot from the New York Times on the day the article was written. And sure enough, 20% of that snapshot was made up of levidromes. They are everywhere.

If Shakespeare was a levidromist, then surely the dictionaries should get on board as well.

Spread the word. Even share the article. As always, #Levidrome

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Happy 2nd Birthday levidrome!

The quest officially began 2 years ago. We at levidromelist.com think of October 9, 2017 as your birthday because that was when your video was published. Wow, time flies.

You just have to go through our News section to see some of the recent developments with the word levidrome. Our site is not the master authority however (although we would like to think so), as there are other websites publishing articles about levidromes.

So for a status update, the levidrome community and supporters are still in a holding pattern waiting for the dictionaries to recognized you. In our eyes, you are already recognized.

Happy 2nd Birthday levidrome ! ! !

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William Shatner, a celebrity advocate for levidromes, tweeted to OxfordWords on October 5, 2019

Hey @OxfordWords Check out the video. It also suggests #Levidrome should be added the the dictionary.

The video Shatner is referring to is the video published by Dominic Fayard on YouTube.

People use levidromes words constantly. They are in all works of publishing (web, books, etc). If you read the article Levidrome Finder, you can see they could make up about 20% of the content of what is published.

Thanks all for the recent spreading of the word. #Levidrome

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Another levidrome video hits YouTube.

Hats off to Dominic Fayard for creating his "Naming Twins" video. In his video, he states, "The goal was simple. To create a video unlike any other." In his video, Fayard compares the 2 proposed words currently being suggested for defining "A word that spells another valid word when read backwards". Those words being semordnilap and levidrome. He endorses levidrome. In the video, he hilites Aidan and Nadia, twins in the video made in a "lego movie" style.

Way to go Dominic! Thanks for spreading the word. Great Video!

Note: We found out about the video on October 10, but posted it with Sep 23rd in our News section to keep in line with the chronology of levidromes.

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We are slowly approaching the 2 year point from when the Levidrome video hit YouTube. We aren't the only ones who noticed.

William Shatner, an celebrity advocate for levidromes, tweeted to OxfordWords on August 28, 2019.

Hey @OxfordWords any updates on #Levidrome being added? It's been in popular use for nearly 2 years now.

And Oxford responded on August 30, 2019

Hello @WilliamShatner. Thank you for getting in touch. Levidrome doesn't yet meet the criteria to be added to the dictionary, but it is on our tracking list for potential inclusion in the future.

In our eyes that is a positive response. The fact that it is still on a tracking list means that it is still on Oxford's radar.

As usual, keep on spreading the word. #Levidrome

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The Australian National Dictionary Centre had a Ozwords competition on Twitter on May 9, 2019.

Here is an excerpt from their tweet:

Ozwords Competition No. 52

In 2017, a young Canadian boy, Levi Budd, invented a new term to describe a word that spells another valid word backwards. For example, stop / pot, deliver / reviled, loop / pool. Levi's term is levidrome, based on his own name and palindrome (a word or phrase that reads the same backwards as forwards). Thanks to a video posted on social media by Levi's father, the word levidrome has gained a lot of publicity. Oxford Dictionaries commented that levidrome is on their watch list of words, and if it becomes used widely, in a year or so it may be added to their dictionaries. Not a bad effort for a six-year-old. Our challenge to you in this competition is to come up with an interesting levidrome. The best, most entertaining, or perhaps the longest one wins. Extra points for levidromes if you convince us the pair of words relate in some way, such as stressed / desserts -- a great levidrome for those on a no-sugar diet.

Reply to @ozworders and @OxfordAustralia to enter. What a great way to spread the word.

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Back in November of 2018 we created a couple of games. Well in actuality, it is the same game but an easy version and a hard version. In either version, the gameplay is the same. You match the levidromic pairs in the shortest amount of guesses and time. At the end of the game, well that's where the hidden fun lies.

Would you believe there are over 3400 unique combinations of comments at the end of the game? In addition to your score, a random compliment is provided as well as a random fact, joke, or phrase / compliment. And naturally, all the comments revolve around levidromes. See how many you can find? See how many you will recognize.

There is also the challenge factor to the games. To see if you can beat the best score of the day, or of all time. The best score of the day resets daily at midnight. So if you are the first one to play that day, you are guaranteed to have the best daily score (for a while anyways until someone else gets a better score). Both the easy and hard version of the game have their own unique daily and all-time scores.

If you would like to add another comment to the game, let us know in our contact page, and as long as it is clean and fun (and of course, levidromic), you may see it popping up at the end of the game as well. Plus you would also have bragging rights saying you helped with the development of an internet game.

Have fun playing! Also have fun reading all the comments.

Hmmm...another levidrome challenge...who will be the first one to see or document all the comments? (present company excluded, of course) :)

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Is Levidrome a Game to You? Loaded question. The answer is no... and yes. Let's take a look.

No. Levidrome is not a game. It is definitely serious. To propose a new word and then rallying support from the public to start using the word is not a game. To prove to the dictionaries that levidrome should be included is a task indeed. To have articles written and stories broadcast on the news and on the internet is not child's play. To receive support from prominent personalities does not sound like a game to me. To have a website built dedicated to levidromes...hmmmm....now we are getting into a grey area.

Levidrome List started as another way of acknowledging the word levidrome. It was also a way of creating a consolildated site for all things levidromic, from multilingual lists to a chronology of the journey, to unique adaptations of games that incorporate levidromes.

Did I just say games? Is Levidrome a Game to You? Yes. And not just to us. Levidrome words have appeared on game shows (Jeopardy). Games have been build specifically with a levidromic theme. Levidrome Match Games (Easy and Hard). Levidrome Challenges. Levidrome Crosswords. Levidrome Hangman. Levidrome Cryptic Clues.

Word games are educational and they are fun. Games are a good medium for spreading the word. Sometimes, finding levidromes in the wild isn't easy, but when they are at the centre of attention like they are in levidromic games, then it is all about the levidromes. And what better way to not only spread the word but also to have fun doing it than by playing games based on our favorite word, Levidromes.

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When the Oxford and Webster dictionaries decide to accept the word levidrome into their dictionaries, we are curious which definition they will use. The idea behind the word levidrome is simple but the wording has to be just right. The definition may reflect the internationality of the word because levidromes exist in all languages. The wording may be able to stand on it's own without making a reference to a palindrome. They will probably include some examples, or a sample sentence with the word levidrome in the sentence. What examples will they use? Are they going to look at current definitions already published in places like the Urban Dictionary x 2, or the Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary? Will one dictionary publish their definition before the other? Will both popular dictionares have a hundle to determine the best definition? How will levidrome translate into other languages? Levidromo? Levidromen?

We have asked a lot of questions. But these were all rhetorical questions because that's what we do when we post articles on the internet. Stir up some debate and possibly some discussions. Make the readers think. One thing is certain though. All questions will be answered given time.

Actually, after writing this article we understand the complexity of adding a new word to the dictionaries. Not only will the dictionaries have to be updated but so will online tools such as Google Translate, independent translators, dictionaries in other languages, printed dictionaries (do they still exist?), and other miscellaneous databases, etc.

Also, ironically even though the title of this article is "Levidrome Definition", we haven't published our definition of levidrome. Or have we? If you think of it, levidromist sounds a lot like Levidromelist (hint, look at the Urban Dictionary link). I guess we shouldn't have to wrap everything up in a nice bow for Oxford and Merriam-Webster. We should leave a little work for them to do. As always, #levidrome.

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For our first article in 2019 we figure we put together a writeup to acknowledge a parodic reference to a levidrome. As you are aware, a levidrome is a word which creates another word when spelled backwards, such as "rail" and "liar", or "tops" and "spot". William Shatner, a celebrity who is a prominent advocate of the word levidrome came up with an idea for another unique type of word. The concept of his idea is taking a word and flipping it upside down, like the image of the word "swims" you see here. Now, depending on the font, you may actually get a word to appear. And since William (or Bill) came up with the idea, this type of word should be called a "Billidrome" which is a play on the words "levidrome" and "palindrome".

A number of letters stay the same when inverted, such as capital "H", "O", "S" or "Z" but others become different letters, such as lowercase "q" becoming "b", or "p" becoming "d". "N" is unique because capital "N" is still "N", but lowercase "n" becomes "u" when inverted. And if you really push the envelope, a "7" can become an "L", a "3" can become an "E", and a "^" can become a "v"...such as in the words "Love" and "3^o7". There are other letters, numbers and characters which create another letter, number or character when flipped.

Billidrome

Here is a list we have compiled of some Billidromes, using only letters:

(you may notice some of these words are not only billidromes, but also palindromes. There is even one levidrome in the mix, see if you can spot it.)

• mop <=> dow
• pooH <=> Hood
• mold <=> plow
• WHO <=> OHM
• sIlos <=> solIs
• swoop <=> dooms
• wool <=> loom
• pow <=> mod
• slow <=> mols
• wow <=> mom
• mow <=> mow
• sumo <=> owns
• did <=> pip
• sid <=> pis
• pod <=> pod
• suns <=> suns
• swims <=> swims

On a final note thank you William Shatner for having the foresight to not call this new type of word a Willidrome.

If you have any other Billidromes you would like to see on this page, leave us a comment, and we will add it.

As per usual, spread the word with #LEVIDROME, or maybe even, #BILLIDROME?

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