autological grandiloquence
Define the adjectives "autological" and "heterological" as follows:
- A word is autological if and only if it describes itself. For example "short" is autological, since the word "short" is short. "Sophisticated" and "polysyllabic" are also autological.
- A word is heterological if and only if it does not describe itself. Hence "long" is a heterological word, as is "monosyllabic".
Since autological and heterological are opposites, all words are members of either the set of "autological" words, or the set of "heterological" words.
The paradox is this: is the word "heterological" heterological? There is no consistent answer: if it is, then it isn't; if it isn't, then it is.
I'm quoting Wikipedia, but I first learned the heterological paradox in my "Advanced Topics in the Logic of Language" seminar 15 years ago. On the other hand, 'grandiloquence' is a word I only just learned from reading's Ralph Raico's German liberalism article on Mises.org.
3 Comments:
The concept of auto & heterological words is relative, not absolute and objective.
For instance, the example word "short" is longer than 1,2,3 and 4 letter words, so it can be relatively long.
The same with the other wikipedia examples; "Obfuscating" is autological because it's a confusing term which means the use of words meant to confuse. But suppose you know what "Obfuscating" means, it is not autological to you since it doesn't confuse you when it's used.
I don't understand why purple is heterological, more so than any other color, with perhaps the exception of black which presumingly is autological because the print itself is in black (with the exception of course being BKmarcus's blog, which than again shows that auto & heterological definitions are RELATIVE!)
The paradox is an artifice. Only with the word heterological, do you insist that the dictionary meaning of the word can be used as the descriptive aspect. If the definition is used, all words can be autological. Short is not autological because it means "not long" but because it both means "not long" and is "not long" as a word. Heterological means "not autological" but does not otherwise have any other quality that points to heterologicality. Accordingly, heterological is merely heterological but not in any sense that would render it autological.
Since autological and heterological are opposites, all words are members of either the set of "autological" words, or the set of "heterological" words.
opposition doesn't imply completeness...
saintly is the opposite of devilish, but most folk are neither saintly nor devilish...
the paradox you pointed to in the link, "Is heterological autological or not?" reminds me of a similar thing in set theory: Let S be the set of all (and only) sets that don't contain themselves. If S doesn't contain itself, then, by definition, S must contain itself. If S contains itself, then by definition, S mustn't contain itself.
I heard this paradox led to a major crisis in mathematical logic back in the 1920s or so, but i don't recall how or if it was ever resolved. (maybe linked to Godel's Incompleteness theorem? another name to google would be Betrand Russell)
Shows the limitations of strict logic when thinking about something as fuzzy as language...
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