Levidromes

If you haven’t been following the #Levidrome campaign it’s time you did!

Levi, a 6 year old boy living in Victoria Canada has a fascination with language. One day he noticed that the word STOP on a stop sign spells POTS if you read it backwards. When Levi learned that there is no word to describe this phenomenon in the dictionary, he came up with the word Levidrome (named after himself of course!).

A levidrome is a word that when spelled backwards, creates another valid English word.

But in order have new words added to the Oxford or Webster’s dictionary, they have to be used extensively by others. So Levi and his father created a video to help Levi get his word added to the dictionary:

A lot of exciting things have happened for Levi since his video was released.

Jocelyn Zumach an Administrative Assistant at Ecole Sir James Douglas School in Victoria, BC recently began circulating this letter which tells the story of Levi’s journey to date, but more importantly is available for you to copy, and share with as many teachers as possible to help Levi reach his goal.

Hi TEACHERS NAME,

I am not sure if you have been following the levidrome campaign or not, but it is pretty amazing and is catching on as a learning language tool. If you aren’t familiar, a 5 year old kid from Victoria, Canada named Levi who was obsessed with palindromes was driving in a car with his mum when they pulled up to a stop sign. He noticed that Stop spells Pots backwards. As it turns out, there is no word in the dictionary for this linguistic phenomenon. He, being 5, wanted to name it after himself so he started calling these words ‘levidromes’. Webster’s and Oxford told him that to get a word into the dictionary it needs to be used a lot. So, they made a youtube video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpZ3bh1R6Kk)Well, the word has gone completely viral with articles being written all over Canada, the UK, India, Australia. It was even talked about on the Today Show in the US (https://www.today.com/video/could-6-year-old-boy-s-invented-word-levidrome-go-in-the-dictionary-1104180803775).

The response has been so overwhelming that Oxford issued a video just to Levi saying that since so many people know this word, it has a VERY good chance to get in. All they need is to see it being used (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJkV9HwtM4k&pbjreload=10).

Teachers and people all over the world are making boards of levidrome words (see attached images) and posting them on social media to help the campaign “Here is a great #levidrome board from NAME OF SCHOOL”. More impressive is that kids all over the place are thinking up and coming up with these words, of which there are hundreds, like stop-pots, stressed-desserts, diaper-repaid, bat-tab… and games like Bananagrams are even posting theirs and saying levidrome will be in their dictionary next year.

I would really like it if we could take part in this as well. Making a levidrome board is great for exercising the kids’ minds and it is a rare opportunity to support a child in his initiative to get a word into the dictionary.

Thanks,

YOUR NAME

Let’s show Levi and children around the world that social media can be used to help people achieve their goals and make their dreams come true.

Follow the #Levidrome campaign on Twitter