An autological word (also called homological word) is a word that expresses a property that it also possesses (e.g., "word" is a word, "noun" is a noun, "English" is an English word, " pentasyllabic" has five syllables, and "writable" is writable.) The opposite is a heterological word, one that does not apply to itself (e.g. the word "long" is not long, "monosyllabic" has more than one syllable, "dactyl" is not a dactyl, and "misspelled" is not misspelled.) Unlike more general concepts of autology and self-reference, this particular distinction and opposition of "autological" and "heterological words" is uncommon in

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

for describing linguistic phenomena or classes of words, but is current in logic and philosophy where it was introduced by

Kurt Grelling Kurt Grelling (2 March 1886 – September 1942) was a German logician and philosopher, member of the Berlin Circle. Life and work Kurt Grelling was born on 2 March 1886 in Berlin. His father, the Doctor of Jurisprudence Richard Grelling, ...

and

Leonard Nelson Leonard Nelson (; ; 11 July 1882 – 29 October 1927), sometimes spelt Leonhard, was a German mathematician, critical philosopher, and socialist. He was part of the neo-Friesian school (named after post-Kantian philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fr ...

for describing a semantic paradox, later known as Grelling's paradox or the

Grelling–Nelson paradox The Grelling–Nelson paradox is an antinomy, or a semantic self-referential paradox, concerning the applicability to itself of the word "wiktionary:heterological, heterological", meaning "inapplicable to itself". It was formulated in 1908 by Kurt ...

.Grelling and Nelson used the following definition when first publishing their paradox in 1908: "Let ''φ(M)'' be the word that denotes the concept defining ''M''. This word is either an element of ''M'' or not. In the first case we will call it 'autological', in the second 'heterological'." (Peckhaus 1995, p. 269). An earlier version of Grelling's paradox had been presented by Nelson in a letter to

Gerhard Hessenberg Gerhard Hessenberg (16 August 1874 – 16 November 1925) was a German mathematician who worked in projective geometry, differential geometry, and set theory. Career Hessenberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1899 under the gu ...

on 28 May 1907, where "heterological" is not yet used and "autological words" are defined as "words that fall under the concepts denoted by them" (Peckhaus 1995, p. 277)

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{{Wiktionary, Appendix:Autological words *

Henry Segerman Henry Segerman (born 1979 in Manchester, UK) is an Associate Professor of mathematics at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma who does research in three-dimensional geometry and topology, especially three-manifolds, triangulations ...

A list of autological words

by Ionatan Waisgluss Self-reference Words Types of words Semantics Logic Definition

See also

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Further reading

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