28 January 2015

Some "shower thoughts" about language

Anyone notice the irony behind "hyphenated" and "non-hyphenated"?

If a word describes itself, it is homological. If a word does not describe itself, it is heterological. So is heterological homological or heterological?

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words.

Monosyllabic isn't.

One word in the English language is always spelled incorrectly.

Via the Shower Thoughts subreddit.

9 comments:

  1. Yes, the only time the word incorrectly isn't spelled i-n-c-o-r-r-e-c-t-l-y is when it's spelled incorrectly!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hypersyllabicsesquipedalianism is a dislike of multisyllabic words....

    ReplyDelete
  3. and i thought all i had to worry about in the shower was making sure that i washed off all the soap!

    I-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hah! The Heterological/homological "problem" is an example of Russell's paradox (e.g. "does the class of all classes include itself?" and so on) though I learned it as "heterological" and "autological" words.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually, there's a hidden assumption here: Is the collection of all classes a class? We first need to determine that, before we go further.

      Lurker111

      Delete
  5. A late comment, but nevertheless:

    I've begun collecting words that are their own opposite, e.g.:

    To table (an item): Opposite meaning on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

    Citation: Can be a good thing or a bad thing (praise, or a traffic ticket or bad-behavior report).

    Lurker111

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lurker, allow me to add to your collection with these two links, which I've been wanting to post for some years -

      http://www.futilitycloset.com/2006/09/30/self-contradicting-words/
      http://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/04/09/auto-antonyms/

      I've always called them "contranyms"

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym

      Delete
    2. Wow! Thanks!

      Lurker111

      Delete

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