-elle

a noun suffix occurring in loanwords from French, where it originally formed diminutives, now often with a derivative sense in which the diminutive force is lost (bagatelle; prunelle; rondelle); also in Anglicized forms of Latin words ending in -ella (organelle).

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What may be the longest single palindromic word?

Poor Dan is in a droop. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. What do these sentences have in common? They’re both palindromes. A palindrome is a word, number, sentence, or verse that reads the same backward or forward. It derives from the Greek palin dromo, which means “running back again.” In palindromes, spacing, punctuation, and capitalization are usually ignored. (This is not the same thing as when …

Origin of -elle

< French < Latin -ella, feminine of -ellus, forming diminutives corresponding to stems ending in -ul- -ule, -r- (see castellum), -n- (see patella)