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Backward-reading couplet

Form
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 couplet designed to be read in reverse order as well as forward.

Detailed Definition
A backward-reading couplet is a pair of rhymed lines engineered so that reading them in reverse order yields a coherent or thematically inverted message, exploiting syntactic flexibility and wordplay to double the poem’s interpretive possibilities through structural reversal.
Example
Example in poetry:
Two lines forming a palindrome when reversed; A rhyming couplet that makes sense both forward and backward; A mirrored pair of lines with inverted word order; A playful couplet meant to be read backward
Additional Notes
Backward-reading couplet is a pair of lines that makes sense both when read in the normal order and when read line 2 followed by line 1; a form of palindrome verse.
Also Known As
reversed couplet mirrored couplet backward rhyme pair inverse couplet Anadromic couplet inverted couplet
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