Autological word

An autological word (or homological word) expresses a property that it also possesses. For example the word "pentasyllabic" has five syllables, and the word "writable" is writable.

The opposite, a heterological word, does not apply to itself. For example, the word "palindrome" is not a palindrome, "monosyllabic" has more than one syllable and "non-hyphenated" is hyphenated.

Unlike more general concepts of autology and self-reference, this particular distinction and opposition of autological and heterological words is uncommon in linguistics for describing linguistic phenomena or classes of words, but is current in logic and philosophy where it was introduced by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson for describing a semantic paradox, later known as Grelling's paradox or the Grelling–Nelson paradox.

See also

• Metaplasm
• Self-reference
• Appendix:English autological terms on Wiktionary

References

Further reading

• Volker Peckhaus: The Genesis of Grelling's Paradox, in: Ingolf Max / Werner Stelzner (eds.), Logik und Mathematik: Frege-Kolloquium Jena 1993, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1995 (Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie, 5), pp. 269–280
• Simon Blackburn: The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. Oxford 2005, p. 30 ("autological"), p. 170 ("heterological"), p. 156 ("Grelling's paradox")

External links

• Henry Segerman: A list of autological words
• A brief look into the different types of autology by Ionatan Waisgluss

1. Verlan
2. Blend word
3. Word painting
4. Conversion (word formation)
5. Wago
6. Eggcorn
7. Synonym
8. Grelling–Nelson paradox
9. Self-reference
10. Property (philosophy)
11. Word
12. Self-documenting code
13. Protologism
14. Camel case
15. Anti-genre
16. Oxymoron
17. Hybrid word
18. Three-letter acronym
19. RAS syndrome
20. Snake case