Outer Reaches of the Palindrome Page: 13
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Dog-bard, a wall arose. Soon, a red, nude-man era stole Gail of deli, and, lo, my tit-net
carts bade, "Trap millions' parts", but a snag rose many fits, and I'd reward no cabs.
Even Eve's bacon drawer did nastify names, organs, a tub, straps. No ill-imparted,
abstract-entity mold nailed foliage. Lots are named under a noose's oral law- a drab god.
Again, the above example contains awkward sentences without clear meanings or contexts, but
being grammatical, the palindrome will extract meaning from the mind of the reader. Contrived
syntax comes in the form of "stole Gail of deli". Most people who speak modern American
English probably would not use such an archaic phrasing; instead, the most common way to say
it would be: stole Gail's deli. "Lo" is another archaic word that muddles the flow of the
palindrome's language; however, these examples of contrived sentence structure only lend to the
eloquence of their reversal: "No ill-imparted, abstract-entity mold nailed foliage. Lots are
named...". Sometimes, for a long palindrome to flow naturally on one side of its axis, the words
on the other side must bear the burden of forced grammar. To quote Ross Eckler, author of the
recreational wordplay book, Making the Alphabet Dance: "Most [long palindromes] read like the
ravings of a maniac. They make local sense, albeit with strained syntax, but have the
disconcerting habit of suddenly shifting the subject being discussed." 1
Another interesting aspect of the above palindrome is the way it expands the boundaries
of language by using the uncommon word "nastify." The meaning of "nastify" is somewhat
obvious- to make nasty. Compare the morphological transformation from "beauty" to
"beautify", which means, "to make beautiful" (e.g. Warren will beautify the backyard by
planting flowers). In the most playful of speaking environments, any noun or adjective can be
supplemented with the suffix "-ify" to take on the formula: X + ify = "to make X-like". Even
strange-sounding words, like "legify," or "oil-upify" are acceptable to the elastic mind; granted,13
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McConnell, Michael Constantine. Outer Reaches of the Palindrome, thesis, December 2003; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4407/m1/16/: accessed May 22, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .