Autological word

Autological word

An autological word or homological word is a word that describes itself, that is self-referential. Since adjectives are words that are designed to describe things, including words, most autological words are adjectives.

Other parts of speech may be autological: nouns and verbs can also be self-descriptive, though not in the same way that adjectives are; phrases may be autological, e.g., “three words long” is three words long; likewise acronyms may be, like TLA for “Three Letter Acronym”.

Heterological

A word which is not autological is heterological, except the word “heterological” itself, which logically cannot be either – see the . The word “autological” itself may be taken, without contradiction, to be either autological or heterological – see .

Ostensive definitions

A source of autological words are words coined by ostensive definition: one names a phenomenon by an example of it, frequently the first, and the resulting term is thus autological.

Examples include , , and .Japanese examples include "jūbako" (重箱) and "yutō" (湯桶); see: Kanji#Other readings.

ee also

* Grelling–Nelson paradox
* Self-reference
*
*

External links

* [http://www.segerman.org/autological.html Autological words]


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