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Is there a term for a word that means itself? For example the word word means itself and is a word.

SophArch
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1 Answers1

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From Wikipedia, emphasis mine:

An autological word (also called homological word or autonym) is a word that expresses a property that it also possesses (e.g. the word "short" is short, "noun" is a noun, "English" is English, "pentasyllabic" has five syllables, "word" is a word, "sesquipedalian" is a long word, "adjectival" is adjectival; see Wiktionary for a partial list).

Kevin Workman
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    Also see wikipedia entry for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference#In_language which discusses autological words and also autograms (sentences which inventories its own letters and punctuation marks). – k1eran Jul 07 '16 at 18:00
  • So an autological word is sort of like an onomatopoeic word, except that instead of sounding like what it represents, it IS what it represents. –  Jul 07 '16 at 21:32
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    My favorite autological word is sesquipedalian. More specifically, my favorite autological word is "sesquipedalian." – Wildcard Jul 07 '16 at 22:48
  • This answer could benefit from some supporting definitions. Or an explanation as to why these terms are used. – Mazura Jul 09 '16 at 00:27