Word.ws English Dictionary

Lychrel number

Lychrel number noun: a natural number that cannot form a palindrome through the iterative process of repeatedly reversing its digits and adding the resulting numbers.

Noun

Lychrel number (plural Lychrel numbers)

  1. A natural number that cannot form a palindrome through the iterative process of repeatedly reversing its digits and adding the resulting numbers.
    • In base ten (decimal), no Lychrel numbers have been yet proved to exist, but many are suspected.

Forms of Lychrel number

pluralLychrel numbers

Origin of Lychrel number

Coined by Wade Van Landingham as a rough anagram of Cheryl, his girlfriend's first name.

Questions about Lychrel number

What does Lychrel number mean?
Lychrel number means a natural number that cannot form a palindrome through the iterative process of repeatedly reversing its digits and adding the resulting numbers.
What part of speech is Lychrel number?
Lychrel number is a noun.
What is the plural of Lychrel number?
The plural of Lychrel number is Lychrel numbers.

Words near Lychrel number in the dictionary

  1. lychnomancy
  2. lychnoscope
  3. lychnoscopes
  4. lychnoscopic
  5. Lychpit
  6. Lychrel number
  7. Lychrel numbers
  8. lychway
  9. lychways
  10. Lycia
  11. Lycian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Lychrel number (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Lychrel number.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lychrel_number. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.