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I am interested in a natural generalization of autological words: cycles of words that each describe their successor (but not themselves).

e.g. an autological 3-cycle is a set of of words "A", "B", and "C" such that A describes B, B describes C, and C describes A.

The only example I'm aware of is one I discovered incidentally on Wikipedia: calque -> loanword. That is, loanword is a calque (but not a loanword), while calque is a loanword (but not a calque).

  • Is there an actual term for such a cycle?
  • What is the longest known such cycle?
  • Are there any collections of such cycles?

Wiki has collections of autological words (e.g. here and here) and a definition/discussion of paradoxes, but I've not been able to find any references to cycles.

Tom
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  • Questions on ELU should not contain mulitple questions in one, as this makes it difficult to accept a single definitive answer. You can, of course, ask all three as separate questions with links to show that they are related for context. – KillingTime Jun 09 '21 at 14:11
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    Your questions might be better off on the Linguistics site. – fev Jun 09 '21 at 14:14
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    How about "monosyllabic" -> "long"? Or "tetrasyllabic" -> "hyphenated" -> "thirteen-lettered" (or is that cheating?) – psmears Jun 09 '21 at 14:55
  • @psmears Nice!! – Mitch Jun 09 '21 at 15:22
  • I’m voting to close this question because it should be asked on Linguistics SE. – fev Jun 09 '21 at 18:51

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