A bright boy from Victoria, Canada, recently discovered that the English language is lacking something — a word to describe words that spell something different when written backwards.
And little Levi Budd even has a fix for it!
According to a now-viral video his family shared on YouTube, it all started when the 6-year-old spotted a stop sign during a ride with his mother.
"Mom, I see that 'stop' spells 'pots' backwards," he noted. "That's not a palindrome. What do we call a word like that ... where a word spells another word backwards?"
While he and his family could find plenty of examples of what he meant — flow/wolf, loop/pool, rats/stars, etc. — there wasn't an official word in the dictionary to describe it.
So they decided the best word for it would be one that salutes the clever kid who found the need for it. That's why, with their video and a social media campaign, they're promoting the use of "levidrome."
And it's catching on!
Schools and libraries have supported the boy's term, and actor William Shatner even reached out to the people behind the Oxford English Dictionary, via email and Twitter, to recommend it for inclusion.
And according to the Oxford University Press, Levi might just see his word make the books — eventually.
"Lots of people know your word and know what it means, which means 'levidrome' is well on its way into our dictionary," the organization explained in a response to Levi.
The word even showed up on this week's Oxford Word Watch list.
But there's still a bit of work left before it can reach the pages of any of the Oxford Dictionaries, because levidrome must "demonstrate widespread and sustained use over time."
It's only been seven weeks since Levi and his family told the world about his neologism, so keep using it!