PALINDROME  反字母回文法

WORD-PLAY in which a text may be read from beginning to end but also from the end to the beginning.

　A word, verse, or sentence that reads the same when the letters composing it are taken in the reverse order. (OED)

Hypernym
  • WORD-PLAYSPEECH ACT which does not only use words but plays with their form and content.WORD-PLAY
    • SPEECH ACTRHETORICAL TROPE in the form of a deliberate rhetorico-semantic act performed. [This definition is still a tentative stop-gap, and this category is far larger than I would like. It needs to be intelligently subdivided. CH]
      • RHETORICAL TROPE體裁詞格　RHETORICAL DEVICE mainly concerned with the structural semantics of expressions.
There being no letters in the Chinese writing system, there is no palindrome in the traditional Latin sense of the word. See, however the Chinese pendant to the palindrome, the Huiwen, in our system - for mnemonic reasons - the PALINDROME-HUIWEN.

Complex traditional example involves traditional names for Aritotelian syllogisms:

Is it Datisi?

No, sire, Ferison.

This has a long tradition in China and became particularly popular from Song times onwards.

EX: "Able was I ere I saw Elba."

Rhetorical device locations: 0