Autological and heterological

My son-in-law, Paz, sent me an email in which he mentioned autological words and heterological words. This was not a concept I was familiar with, so thank you, Paz, for extending my education.

It’s an interesting topic for anyone interested in words, so if that’s you – read on!

Paz provided some examples: ‘word’, ‘English’, ‘pentasyllabic’ and ‘writable’ are autological; ‘palindrome’, ‘non-hyphenated’ and ‘long’ are heterological.

Can you work out what’s going on here? I could not at first.

‘Word’ is a word, ‘English’ is written in English, ‘pentasyllabic’ has five syllables, and ‘writable’ is capable of being written.

‘Palindrome’ is not palindromic, ‘non-hyphenated’ is not free of hyphens, and ‘long’ is not a long word.

And that’s what the terms mean. Autological words fit their own meaning, heterological words don’t!

This, of course, got me thinking. Is ‘autological’ itself autological or heterological? Clearly, I thought, it must be autological – an example of its own meaning. But what about ‘heterological’? This is known as the Grelling-Nelson Paradox.

Useful? Interesting?

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