We're within inches of Russell's paradox (he called it an antimony): what's the opposite of autological? That is, a word that doesn't describe itself.
Conversely, of the cognate Catalan terms only 'agut' (='agudo') is autological, whereas 'pla' and 'esdrúixol' are not. The Spanish words 'llano' (paroxytone: stress on the penultimate syllable) and 'esdrújulo' (proparoxytone: stress on the antepenultimate syllable) are autological, whereas 'agudo' (oxytone: stress on the final syllable) is not. I think tend to say "anapest" (on the rather rare occasions I have cause to utter it) as an anapest, but apparently this is a solecism and the conventional stress pattern is dactylic. "awkwardfulness" "sesquipedalian" "trochee" "noun" "intangible" "cromulent"Ī dactylus/daktylos is indeed a dactyl the only problem is it's missing something in English. "trochee") but plenty of others aren't (e.g. Separately, it's interesting to note that some of the traditional names for poetic "feet" are autological (e.g.
Someone out there on the internet has come up with a bunch that will make sense only to phonetics/phonology enthusiasts, like "sibilant-initial" and "lateral-final." If it is not anti-autological, it must be autological, which by definition of autology would mean it describes itself and is therefore anti-autological, which is again a contradiction to its supposed not being anti-autological. If it is anti-autological, by definition of autology it describes itself and is autological, which is a contradiction to its supposed anti-autologicalness. One of my favourite paradoxes is whether "anti-autological" is an anti-autological word. The comic fails to address the thorny question of whether the word "heterological" is autological. Is autological autological? And what about unautological? I've long thought that "poubelle" (trash can) is the most beautiful word in French. "cellar door, which many have called the most beautiful phrase in English,"
"Pentasyllabic" is a more high-achieving example. Filed by Mark Liberman under Linguistics in the comicsĬomic Barry Crimmins: Funny thing about the word "esoteric".And there are no doubt many anti-autological words, e.g. "Cellar door" is sort of anti-onomatopoetic, since its alleged phonaesthetic beauty is far away from any obvious associations with its aesthetically-lacking referent. Wikipedia's article on phonaesthetics cites two of Geoff's LLOG posts, " The Romantic Side of Familiar Words" () and " 'Slide down my cellar door'" ().Īutological words, which "describe themselves", are somewhat like onomatopoetic words, which sound like themselves, or at least imitate a sound associated with their referent. In the context of Geoff Nunberg's recent passing, this sets up a chain of associations that leads to cellar door, which many have called the most beautiful phrase in English, at least phonaesthetically, despite its pedestrian if not downright ugly referent. The mouseover text: "This comic is actually just a random sequence of pixels."
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