There’s a goofball little saying about the English language that goes like this: “English, I fancy you all agree, is the funniest language you ever did see.” Others have said, “There’s no ham in hamburger, no egg in eggplant and neither pine nor apple in pineapple.” Discuss.

 

And you know already the whole bit about parking in a driveway and driving on a parkway. Expressions like “cake walk” and “a piece of cake” unsurprisingly have zero to do with baked goods of any kind. The list goes on. And strangely, so do these blog posts. ;)

 

The Riddle

Today, we’re going to play a little game. I’m going to invent a story. It’ll most likely sound forced and make little sense. You’re going to go along with it and ultimately tell me which ridiculous English-language phenomenon we’re dealing with and how many instances you can find. I’m going to make this really easy and tell you how it’ll all go down. Are you ready?

 

Instructions

You’ll read through the tale below looking interested, amused and slightly perplexed. I’ll look on in anticipation trying to play it cool. You’ll pretend to scratch your head and really “think about it” for a minute. I’ll grin excitedly thinking I might have stumped you. You’ll pause for effect—a good long one. Then you’ll answer correctly, and we’ll both slap our thighs (we’re sitting) and tell each other what good fun it was. Then you’ll finish your dry martini with a flourish and go home to watch “Leave it to Beaver,” because apparently, we’re in the 1950s with this bad script.

 

The Tale of Bob & Hannah

Bob meets Hannah and falls in love. Hannah is an activist who likes to stack cats and her mantra in life is “Step on no pets.” Bob likes to barter and he also likes nuts. You can hear him on any given Sunday at the market shouting, “A nut for a jar of tuna.” (Hannah buys tuna in bulk for the cats so there’s plenty left to trade.) He also grows honeydew and cantaloupe to sell and his catch phrase is “No lemon, no melon.” He drives a hard bargain because he refuses to drink a glass of water without a slice of lemon. Bob and Hannah loved to kayak at noon on the lake near their house in Appaloosa.

 

The couple has three children named Otto (after Bob’s grandfather), Eve (they don’t let her eat apples), and Anna. They regret naming Anna “Anna” instead of “Anne” because it’s so easily confused with Hannah. To fix this, they decided her nickname would be Olive. But, her brother Otto teases her by calling her Evil Olive because as he says, “It’s mean and it kind of rhymes.” He only does this when he’s in his “doom mood” as Eve likes to call it. Eve always takes the top spot in school–she’s a typical first-girl child. When the children all go for a walk after dinner with their mother, Anna likes to say “Was that a cat I saw?” so that Hannah gets excited to find out if it’s a stray she can take in. There almost never is. In her free time, Hannah goes door to door for animal rights carrying her trusty sign that says, “Rise to vote sir.” Bob, a progressive trader, tells Hannah that she should really change the sign to be more inclusive of female voters. She dismissively replies, “Gateman sees name, garageman sees nametag.” He thinks this means something to the effect of “to each his own…” but he never can be sure. He enjoys rising to the occasion and saying something equally strange like, “You know what honey? ... Some men interpret nine memos.” At this, she rolls her eyes as if he’s the odd one.

 

Useless Clues

If you haven’t yet sorted out what on earth is going on, I’ll give you three completely useless clues. 1) The answer to this puzzle is a word derived from two Greek words meaning back and direction. 2) The phrase in Greek apparently alluded to the backward movement of a crab. 3) This phenomenon dates back to 70AD and can be found in ancient Greek and ancient Sanskrit.

 

Totally clear, right?

 

The Answer

Palindromes. Palindrome refers to a word or phrase that read the same way forwards and backwards. The words in Greek are palin (back) and dromos (direction). Makes sense now, eh?

 

So if we take a look at the tall tale above, all of our character’s names are palindromes—that’s 5. If we break it down by character, we’ll find 13 instances of palindromic words or phrases making the grand total 18.

• Hannah: Stacks cats; Step on no pets; Rise to vote, sir; Gateman sees name, garageman sees nametag

• Bob: A nut for a jar of tuna; No lemon, no melon; Some men interpret nine memos, kayak, noon

• Otto: Evil olive

• Eve: Top spot, Doom mood

• Anna: Was that a cat I saw

 

Here are some more palindromic phrases that I was too lazy to try to weave into the story.

• Madam I’m Adam 

• Sit on a pan, Otis

• Able was I, ere I saw Elba.

• Don't nod.

• I did, did I?

• My gym

• Red rum, sir, is murder

• Eva, can I see bees in a cave? 

I’m a particular fan of “Sit on a pan, Otis” because I’ve never heard it before and it’s just ridiculous. I just want to know someone named Otis so I can tell him to sit on a pan. Apparently, I’d find that funny. Is it just me?

 

Lastly, if you want to get even crazier, there are what you call line-level palindromes. Check out this poem called “Seaside Canon” by Julia Galef:

The ocean was still.
In an empty sky, two gulls turned lazy arcs, and
their keening cries echoed
off the cliff and disappeared into the sea.
When the child, scrambling up the rocks, slipped
out of her parents' reach,
they called to her. She was already
so high, but those distant peaks beyond —
they called to her. She was already
out of her parents' reach
when the child, scrambling up the rocks, slipped
off the cliff and disappeared into the sea.
Their keening cries echoed
in an empty sky. Two gulls turned lazy arcs, and
the ocean was still.

 

If you look closely somewhere in the middle, you start to see recent lines repeated, in reverse order and you realize that the whole poem is a line-level palindrome. The first line is the same as the last, the second line is the same as the second-to-last, and so on. But what makes this interesting is that the same phrases may have different meanings when they reoccur in the reverse order. Good head-scratcher, no?

 

And finally, to close this post out, please listen to a brilliant little tune called “The Ballad of Palindrome” by Riders in the Sky. Not only is the band Grammy award winning talent, they are brilliant writers and hilarious entertainers. Seriously, press play and chuckle.

A shout out to the bassist Fred LaBour, esteemed father of a good college friend.  Mr. LaBour’s witty advice for the “real world” to a bunch of anxious, high-achievers has always stayed with me: “If you’re on time and sober, you’re doing better than 95% of people.”

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Random Sources:

http://www.funenglishgames.com/funstuff/palindromes.html

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/palindrome-examples.html

https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/06/a-crab-canon-for-douglas-hofstadter.html