What is a catchy word that means (non-)self-descriptive

Question

I'm having fun with paradoxes, and I'm trying to come up with a catchy word for non-self-descriptive. Maybe "autosemantic" fits the bill for self-descriptive (definitely open to other suggestions!), but I'm having a hard time negating it in a natural way.

For an example of the sentence I'm trying to construct:

Is "inautosemantic" inautosemantic?

It just isn't flowing.

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 05 '11 at 00:56

10

I believe you're looking for "autological"/"homological" and their antonym "heterological".

answered Feb 05 '11 at 00:56

chaos

19,612

1

+1 Looks right to me. These aren't words to be used in every-day speech though. In formal writing however, they're great. :) – Noldorin Feb 05 '11 at 01:05
1

If I remember right, heterological was coined exactly for the sake of the paradox you describe :-) – PLL Feb 05 '11 at 01:05
@Noldorin: You clearly are not engaging in everyday speech with the right people. – chaos Feb 05 '11 at 02:31
3

@PLL It's called the Grelling-Nelson paradox, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grelling%E2%80%93Nelson_paradox – Mark McDonald Feb 05 '11 at 07:39
I hope that's irony, else you've just made me very sad by a gross assumption. – Noldorin Feb 05 '11 at 23:37
1

So "English" is "autological", but "french" isn't ("francais" would have been, but it's not an English word). – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '12 at 03:18

What is a catchy word that means (non-)self-descriptive

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