An autological word (or homological word) expresses a property that it also possesses. For example, the word "word" is a word, the word "English" is (in) English, the word "writable" is writable, and the word " pentasyllabic" has five syllables. The opposite, a heterological word, does not apply to itself. For example, the word "palindrome" is not a

palindrome A palindrome (Help:IPA/English, /ˈpæl.ɪn.droʊm/) is a word, palindromic number, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date "Twosday, 02/02/2020" and th ...

, "unwritable" is writable, and "monosyllabic" has more than one syllable. 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 scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

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 Frie ...

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

Grelling–Nelson paradox The Grelling–Nelson paradox arises from the question of whether the term "non-self-descriptive" is self-descriptive. It was formulated in 1908 by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson, and is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the German philosophe ...

.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 ...

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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External links

{{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, triangulation ...

A list of autological words

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

See also

References

Further reading

External links