What is a "palindrome"?

A palindrome reads identically forward and backward because its letters are symmetrical around a central point. This works at the level of words like "level" or "racecar," but the same principle can extend to full sentences once you ignore spaces and punctuation, since the rule only cares about letter order.

A word with no vowels, like "rhythm," is a completely different curiosity with no connection to symmetry, and a newly invented word is simply a neologism, unrelated to how its letters are arranged.

Famous palindromic sentences, like "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama," show how writers construct entire palindromes by choosing words so the whole phrase mirrors itself, turning wordplay into genuine craft.