reverse spelling

Noun

reverse spelling (countable and uncountable, plural reverse spellings)

1. The spelling or writing of a word in reverse or from back to front.
   • Teaching assistants monitored accuracy of reverse spelling. Later in the session, students were asked to spell words in writing from each of the word sets practiced in the session.2006 November 1, Suzanne Hidi, Pietro Boscolo, “Mark Twain's Writers' Workshop”, in Writing and Motivation, Brill, page 177
   • He is perhaps better known for his grotesque tales which he published in a variety of Expressionist journals under the pseudonym Mynona, a reverse spelling of the German word for anonymous.2013, Seth Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans: The Politics of German Expressionism 1910-1920, page 117
2. A specific spelling of a word representing a phonetic feature never present in it, but present in other words in the same phonetic environment (and later lost); an inverse spelling.
   • The loss of ȝ between a front vowel and t, which Wyld finds in the middle of the fifteenth century but assigns to an earlier date,³⁵ is shown by both rhyme and spelling in knyght:whight (white) 562-63. The reverse spelling occurs again in whiȝte 566.1947, The University of Michigan Contributions in Modern Philology, volumes 1-10, page 9
   • […]several cases of reverse spelling of ae for /ē/, especially in accented syllable^([sic]), however, do show that a close pronunciation of the e from ae was possible, and the Romance languages do posit a close /ē/ for some words.1977, Stephen William Omeltchenko, A Quantitative and Comparative Study of the Vocalism of the Latin Inscriptions of North Africa, Britain, Dalmatia, and the Balkans, page 399