Somewhere in the back of my mind is a cluttered cabinet in a disarray of strange and superb facts which are of no use whatsoever apart from being of interest. An entire drawer of this cabinet is packed full of little nuggets of information about the English language. There might have been one too many metaphors in that paragraph.
An autological word is a word that describes itself. The boring example is that "short" is a short word, so it's autological.
Other examples are listed below:
- Polysyllabic (also sesquipedalian, which has the same meaning)
- Unhyphenated
- Descriptive
- Writable
- Rhyming (timing, climbing)
- Erudite (a fancy-pants way of saying knowledgable)
- Plosive
- Numberless
- Asymmetrical
- Wee (as in the Scottish word for "small")
There are plenty of other examples, but those are the ones which most clearly describe themselves, in my opinion. There will be some more posts about the fascinating qualities of language over the next few days -- at least until I'm able to talk about some new books.
Another great blogpost! I find the other side much more interesting - heterological words - words that describes the opposite of itself. I wonder if you can think of some examples for a future blogpost?
ReplyDeleteNow to really confuse you... is "contradiction" a heterological word or an autological word? ;)
Hmmm, that's certainly an idea! I do have twenty-four more blog posts to do, after all.
ReplyDeleteMy mind is blown.