Examples
“To each word there corresponds a concept, that the very word designates, and which applies to it or does not apply; in the first case, we call the word autological, else heterological.”
“PS sesquipedalian is my favourite autological word .”
“Now the word ˜heterological™ itself is autological or heterological.”
“Assuming that the word is autological, the concept that it designates applies, hence”
“If ˜heterological™ is heterological, then since it describes itself, it is autological.”
“Now for the riddle: Is ˜heterological™ heterological or autological?”
“Kurt Grelling's paradox, for instance, opens with a distinction between autological and heterological words.”
“An autological word describes itself, e.g., ˜polysyllabic™ is polysllabic, ˜English™ is English, ˜noun™ is a noun, etc.”
“-- I mean these with love! fish: Ivan Soll. bird: Mike Byrd. occupation: Terry Penner. (archaic -- and that aspect is also autological!).”
“Marcus Singer. autological: Elliott Sober. (and Carolina Sartorio -- is this a borderline case?) heterological: Claudia Card. (slang -- and could be autological, depending on mood) sentence (imperative): Lester Hunt and Dennis Stampe. (borderline cases -- Haskell Fain and Alan Sidelle)”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘autological’.
-
Word Words
This used to be my nym list, but there are so many words about words, I think it's time to expand and open.
acronym, antonym, aptronym, autoantonym, autonym, bacronym, capitonym, contranym, contronym, eponym, exonym, heteronym and 120 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
Philosophical Shit
Thought-provokers; words that ask more questions than they answer.
meta, semantic, signify, sign, autological, heterological, ontology, hylozoism, abiogenesis, anima, homoiconicity, anthropomorphism and 3 more...
-
Linguistic Terms
Words that (mostly) only linguists know.
arpabet, protologism, diacritic, macron, macaronic, capitonym, grapheme, boustrophedon, allograph, analphabetic, idiomatic, portmanteau and 39 more...
-
Autological Word Collection
The title says it all
zeke Utahraptor: So is "heterological" heterological?
T-Rex: Well if it IS, then it's self-describing, which means autological. And if it ISN'T, then it's autological again too. Huh. If this paradox is supposed to make me trip balls, you should know I've taken the precaution of having them TIGHTLY SECURED. Jul 13, 2011
Dan337 dagfooyo & jmjarmstrong: The paradox you described is the Grelling–Nelson paradox. Grelling and Nelson defined* “autological” (and its opposite, “heterological”) specifically for the purpose of expressing the paradox. The fact that you both inferred the paradox from the word alone, in my opinion, makes “autological” a single-word koan.
See also Russell's paradox.
* I don’t know whether these words were already in use before Nelson and Grelling’s 1908 paper, so I can’t guarantee that they coined them. Jan 31, 2011
jmjarmstrong JM can't figure out if autological is autological. Jan 29, 2011
dagfooyo Is autological itself an autological word? The question's trickier than it sounds. In order to know if a word describes itself, we must look at the definition of the word which in this case is a word which describes itself. So asking this question brings us right back to the same question again! It creates an endless logical loop, also known as a strange loop. Until we know if autological describes itself or not, we can't answer that very question - and so the question is unanswerable. Jan 4, 2010
mgs A word which is an example of itself is autological. For example polysyllabic is autological. Jun 10, 2009
oroboros An autological adjective is one which is self-descriptive; "pentasyllabic", "awkwardfulness", "short". A heterological adjective is not self-descriptive; "edible", "hungry", "monosyllabic", "long". Jan 24, 2008