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A palindrome is a word or phrase that's read the same way forwards and backwards (eg. race car). Is there a word for something that is pronounceable both forwards and backwards, but not necessarily the same word (or, conversely, a word for the opposite case where things are not pronounceable both forwards and backwards)?

Eg. in English speaking countries we call a certain large international organization "NATO", while in French speaking countries it's "OTAN" (both of which are easily pronounceable). Maybe there's a word specific to acronyms even if there's not a general word?

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  • Since this is English language and usage, it doesn't really matter that I don't actually know how the French pronounce OTAN. But it seems unlikely they'd use the same long A as the English version (which would probably be spelled otane if we had such a word). Though I suspect if you actually played a tape recording of NATO backwards, it wouldn't necessarily contain any valid/recognizable English phonemes at all. – FumbleFingers Aug 28 '15 at 13:42
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The closest that I can think of is a semordnilap. It's when a word or phrase makes another word or phrase when spelled backwards.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/semordnilap

Note that semordnilap is palindromes spelled backwards. :-)

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  • Oddly, at least in American English, that word itself is actually not the thing I was trying to describe (that "dn" isn't really pronounceable). But thanks, that's pretty close; I'll have to remember that. – Sam Whited Aug 28 '15 at 18:20
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    @SamWhited I believe that the pronunciation is suppose to be something along the lines of (se)-mord-ni-lap, accent on the (se). I think that it is ironic that semordnilap is likely a more of a meta word that was created using the very method it describes, but sort of does so poorly. I believe that semordnilapped words are suppose to generally be pronounceable. – Tyree Jackson Aug 28 '15 at 19:18

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