palindrome
/ˈpælɪndɹoʊm/noun
palindrome is a noun meaning “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…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-A-L-I-N-D-R-O-M-E, and it appears about once in every 7 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of palindrome is palindromes.
What does palindrome mean?
noun
- 1
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.
- 2
A poetic form in which the sequence of words reads the same in either direction.
- 3
A sequence of items that follows the same pattern both forwards and backwards.
- 4
A stretch of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides on one strand are in the reverse order to that of the complementary strand
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce palindrome?
- UK /ˈpælɪndɹəʊm/
- US /ˈpælɪndɹoʊm/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-palindrome.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of palindrome
- palindromes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is palindrome?
Palindrome appears about once in every 7 million words in written English, the 77,666th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Palindrome in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense a sequence of units that reads the same forwards as backwards:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | palindrome |
| German | Palindrom |
| Portuguese | palíndromo, capicua |
| Spanish | palíndromo, capicúa |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does palindrome come from?
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).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).