Isn't a palindrome a phrase that reads the same backwards or forwards? What I'm looking for is the term for a word that makes a different word backwards, like my "eel : lee" example. As I said, it's a variant of an anagram.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The term I've heard of for it is ananym, though if you look that up on-line you'll find it often refers specifically to names used backwards as passwords. Possibly that's because the word already existed for the eel/lee relation, and was taken up by the sort of people who (a) need passwords, and (b) use the Internet.
Well, it's been called a semordnilap (which is simply palindromes spelled backwards), but I wouldn't say that this term could be considered a "word" rather than a coinage that's been thrown out to the world. It gets only about 107 distinct google hits, plus another 16 for the plural form.
By coincidence I read in my newspaper this morning about the tennis player, Serena Williams. She has apparently been filling in time while she was injured designing clothes for her Aneres label. "Aneres", of course, is "Serena" backwards.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
A famous Greek palindrome is: "Nipson anomimata mi monan opsin" from Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. It means: wash yourself of your sins and don't just wash your face.
