# Autological word

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Word that expresses a property it also possesses

"Autological" redirects here; not to be confused with [Autologous](/source/Autologous) or [Autonym](/source/Autonym_(disambiguation)).

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An **autological word** (or **homological word**)[1] 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](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pentasyllabic)" has five syllables.

The opposite, a **heterological word**, does not apply to itself. For example, the word "palindrome" is not a [palindrome](/source/Palindrome), "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](/source/Linguistics) for describing linguistic phenomena or classes of words, but is current in logic and philosophy where it was introduced by [Kurt Grelling](/source/Kurt_Grelling) and [Leonard Nelson](/source/Leonard_Nelson) for describing a semantic paradox, later known as Grelling's paradox or the [Grelling–Nelson paradox](/source/Grelling%E2%80%93Nelson_paradox) (regarding whether the word "heterological" is autological).[2]

## See also

- [Aptronym](/source/Aptronym)

- [Self-reference](/source/Self-reference)

- [Appendix:English autological terms](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_autological_terms) on [Wiktionary](/source/Wiktionary)

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** "homological", *The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy* (2005), ed. Simon Blackburn, 2nd edition. Oxford University Press

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** 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](/source/Gerhard_Hessenberg) 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)

## Further reading

- Volker Peckhaus: *The Genesis of Grelling's Paradox*, in: Ingolf Max / Werner Stelzner (eds.), *Logik und Mathematik: Frege-Kolloquium Jena 1993*, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1995 (Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie, 5), pp. 269–280

- Simon Blackburn: *The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy*, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. Oxford 2005, p. 30 ("autological"), p. 170 ("heterological"), p. 156 ("Grelling's paradox")

## External links

Look up ***[autological](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/autological)*** in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up ***[Appendix:Autological words](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Autological_words)*** in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

- [Henry Segerman](/source/Henry_Segerman): [A list of autological words](http://www.segerman.org/autological.html)

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