Updated to delete final sentence
Some social media users make the claim that the word ‘homework’ spelled backwards (krowemoh) means child abuse in Latin. The claim is false and appears to have been originally shared as a joke.
Posts on Instagram with thousands of likes can be seen here, here and here. The claim was also shared here, here, and on Tiktok vm.tiktok.com/ZMeM9qxqv/, vm.tiktok.com/ZMeM9gfSx/.
A search for Logeion, an open database developed at the University of Chicago compiling Latin and Greek dictionaries, returned no relevant results for ‘krowemoh’ (logeion.uchicago.edu/).
In fact, the letter “w” was not part of the classical Latin alphabet, which originally consisted of 23 letters. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica here, it was only in the Middle Ages – when the letter “v” (originally part of the Latin alphabet) was differentiated into “u”, “v” and “w”, and the letter “j” was added – that the 26-letter alphabet has been introduced. (here).
ORIGIN
The earliest repetition of the claim that Reuters found is a tweet of March 17, 2013, which was apparently posted as a joke here (archived here ). Some reports making this claim in 2021 include a screenshot of this tweet visible in Google search (here).
A search for the term “Latin” in the user’s Twitter feed (bit.ly/3v2Kbwd) revealed another alleged definition of ‘krowemoh’: ” Homework ‘spelled backwards is’ krowemoh’. fed for a pack of hungry lions than to do so ‘, she tweeted here .
Other supposed definitions for backward-spelled English words tweeted by the user include “geometry” ( here ), “school” ( here ) and ‘private account’ ( here ).
As proof, in other iterations (vm.tiktok.com/ZMeM9gfSx/) there is a screenshot of the website Urban Dictionary’s entry for ‘krowemoh’ here. As outlined by the MIT Technology Review in a 2018 article (bit.ly/3qsb60T), the content of the site may be ‘vague and inaccurate’, and it may contain opinions as it has no style guides, editors or moderators . . This is acknowledged by the platform itself in its Terms of Service about.urbandictionary.com/tos (see user behavior).
VERDICT
Untrue. Homework spelled backwards, or “krowemoh”, does not mean child abuse in Latin.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.