Autological

An autological word (or homological word) 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 "" has five syllables. The opposite, a heterological word, does not have the property it names. For example, the word "palindrome" is not a palindrome, "unwritable" is writable, and "monosyllabic" has more than one syllable. These terms were coined by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson in order to discuss a semantic paradox, akin to Russell's paradox: classifying the word "heterological" as either autological or heterological leads to a logical contradiction. This is now known as the Grelling-Nelson paradox. See alsoAptronymSelf-reference on WiktionaryReferencesFurther readingVolker 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. 269–280Simon Blackburn: The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. Oxford 2005, p. 30 ("autological"), p. 170 ("heterological"), p. 156 ("Grelling's parado