By: Kristen Hall-Geisler | Updated: Jan 21, 2021 " Taco cat is a silly example of a palindrome. Moonnoon/Shutterstock/Howstuffworks "Madam, I'm Adam." If Adam said this on meeting Eve in the Garden of Eden, it would have definitely been the first palindrome. What's a palindrome you ask? It's a phrase (or a sentence, or a paragraph, or a story, or a poem or even a date) that reads the same backward and forward. Whether you start on the right or the left, and not accounting for punctuation, that sentence reads, "Madam, I'm Adam." The word palindrome comes from the Greek "palin-" meaning back or again, and "-dromos," which means running or moving. So it's a word or phrase that's running back on itself.