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Anadrome

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A reversible poem whose meaning, tone, or narrative shifts significantly when its lines are read in reverse order.

Detailed Definition
An anadrome is a word or phrase spelled backward to form another meaningful word or phrase, sometimes used in poetry for wordplay, symbolic reversal, or cryptographic effect; it intersects with palindromes and anagrams in experimental or puzzle-oriented verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Anadrome in Vladimir Nabokov’s palindromic wordplay; anadrome in Lewis Carroll’s mirror poems; anadrome in contemporary Oulipo works by Georges Perec; anadrome reverses word or line order to create symmetrical structures
Additional Notes
Poem or passage reading same backward. Related to palindrome (letter-level) but typically word-level. Rare constraint form. Creates formal challenge and surprise. See Oulipo experiments and constraint-based writing.
Other Meanings of “Anadrome”
Also Known As
Backward word Reverse spelling Palindromic element
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