A six-year-old has invented a new word and now, a campaign to get the word in the dictionary is viral. Canada's Levi Budd came up with the word "levidrome" to describe a word that spells another word when spelt backwards. Truth be told, our favourite levidrome is "stressed" which is "desserts" spelt backwards. Other examples include loop and pool, flow and wolf, stop and pots and finally, rats and star.
While it's surprising that there's not a word for this already, the Internet is rallying behind young Levi after an editor at Oxford Dictionaries suggested the word could only be added to dictionaries after it was used commonly over a period of time.
One day, sitting in the backseat of the car, Levi noticed the word "stop" on a stop sign read "pots" in reverse.
His parents had no answer.
"Alas," Oxford Dictionaries lamented in a blog post, "levidrome still needs to demonstrate widespread and sustained use over time before dictionaries can formally add it to its pages, but (William) Shatner, no doubt, helped boost the coinage's signal."
Rebecca Jaganaru, an assistant editor with Oxford, replied to Levi on Twitter promising, "If, in a year or so, lots of people are still using your word, it might well get into our dictionary."
And just like that, the Internet was up for a challenge:
"Levidrome" has become the first word featured on Oxford's Weekly Word Watch. It has also been added to Merriam-Webster's open-source dictionary of user-submitted words and the crowd-sourced Urban Dictionary online.
While it's surprising that there's not a word for this already, the Internet is rallying behind young Levi after an editor at Oxford Dictionaries suggested the word could only be added to dictionaries after it was used commonly over a period of time.
One day, sitting in the backseat of the car, Levi noticed the word "stop" on a stop sign read "pots" in reverse.
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His parents had no answer.
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.
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"Alas," Oxford Dictionaries lamented in a blog post, "levidrome still needs to demonstrate widespread and sustained use over time before dictionaries can formally add it to its pages, but (William) Shatner, no doubt, helped boost the coinage's signal."
Rebecca Jaganaru, an assistant editor with Oxford, replied to Levi on Twitter promising, "If, in a year or so, lots of people are still using your word, it might well get into our dictionary."
And just like that, the Internet was up for a challenge:
"Levidrome" has become the first word featured on Oxford's Weekly Word Watch. It has also been added to Merriam-Webster's open-source dictionary of user-submitted words and the crowd-sourced Urban Dictionary online.
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