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A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward or forward. Allowances may be made for adjustments to capital letters, punctuation, and word dividers. Famous examples include "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!", "Amor, Roma", "race car", "stack cats", "step on no pets", "taco cat", "put it up", "Was it a car or a cat I saw?" and "No 'x' in Nixon". Composing literature in palindromes is an example of constrained writing. The word "palindrome" was coined by the English playwright Ben Jonson in the 17th century from the Greek roots ' (; "again") and ' (; "way, direction"). ==History== Palindromes date back at least to 79 AD, as a palindrome was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, a city buried by ash in that year. This palindrome, called the Sator Square, consists of a sentence written in Latin: "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" ("The sower Arepo holds with effort the wheels"). It is remarkable for the fact that the first letters of each word form the first word, the second letters form the second word, and so forth. Hence, it can be arranged into a word square that reads in four different ways: horizontally or vertically from either top left to bottom right or bottom right to top left. As such, they can be referred to as palindromatic. A palindrome with the same property is the Hebrew palindrome, "We explained the glutton who is in the honey was burned and incinerated", (פרשנו רעבתן שבדבש נתבער ונשרף; perashnu: ra`avtan shebad'vash nitba'er venisraf''), by Abraham ibn Ezra, referring to the halachic question as to whether a fly landing in honey makes the honey ''treif'' (non-kosher). The palindromic Latin riddle "''In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni''" ("we go wandering at night and are consumed by fire") describes the behavior of moths. It is likely that this palindrome is from medieval rather than ancient times. Byzantine Greeks often inscribed the palindrome, "Wash () sins, not only () face" ("''Nīpson anomēmata mē mōnan ōpsin''", engraving "''ps''" with the single Greek letter Ψ, psi), on baptismal fonts. This practice was continued in many English churches. Examples include the font at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham and also the font in the basilica of St. Sophia, Constantinople, the font of St. Stephen d'Egres, Paris; at St. Menin's Abbey, Orléans; at Dulwich College; and at the following churches: Worlingworth (Suffolk), Harlow (Essex), Knapton (Norfolk), St Martin, Ludgate (London), and Hadleigh (Suffolk). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Palindrome」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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