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Comment on English is a strange language.

There’s actually a whole class of these words. They’re called heterological words.

Their opposite, autological (or homological) words are words that do describe themselves. Autological is an autological word because it describes itself.

Here’s a fun question, though: is “heterological” a heterological word? If you say yes, then that means it does not describe itself and therefore it is not heterological. If you say no, then it does describe itself therefore it is heterological. Bit of a head scratcher.

This is the Grelling-Nelson paradox.

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RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Why is autological an autological word?

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- blujan@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Because it refers to itself, it’s like the trivial case
  
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  - RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    How does it refer to itself?
    
    It would need to already have been referring to itself to refer to itself
    
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    Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨47⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    I think you’re right. There’s a bit of an infinite regress problem, isn’t there?
    
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    blujan@sopuli.xyz ⁨41⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    I think you’re right, it made sense earlier but not anymore
    
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Quicky@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I used to be really interested in paradoxes, but I decided in my old age that they’re all just bloody annoying and pointless. 99% of paradoxes are just linguistics. All these philosophers who spent their lives debating them are infuriating bastards. “Oh you’ve come up with another unsolvable word puzzle have you? Well that’s language for you - an abstraction developed by the fallible. Congratulations mate, great use of everyone’s time.”

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pyre@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
the new administration has banned the use of homological words so be careful.

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sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
My favorite homological word:

Sesquipedalian:

An unnecessarily long word, or a person who uses unnecessarily long words.

Sesquipedalian is a sesquipedalian word.

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- Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oooh, that’s a good one! Its use also makes its user described by itself. Neat!
  
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ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Isn’t there a mistake in your first statement about the word heterological? If I say yes the word heterological is heterological it means that it doesn’t fall into the class of words that it describes and so it is heterological, because as you’ve defined heterological words do not describe themselves

Here’s a fun question, though: is “heterological” a heterological word? If you say yes, then that means it does not describe itself and therefore it is not heterological.

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- Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You’re correct. I had an extra not in there! Good catch.
  
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  - Amanduh@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s how you know it’s a real head scratcher
    
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  - ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I was actually referring to the other “not” that was at the end, but it only shows why it is paradoxical and how confusing nature of predication is in languages, as in this question appears to be a case of Russell’s paradox of sets
    
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    Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Just a good reason not to dabble in paradoxes before you’ve had some coffee. lol
    
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jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You’re the substitute teacher who wouldn’t let us play Heads Up Seven Up.

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