18 Jan 2012 - Autological words

I was looking at my blog today and I noticed a comment from a friend of mine, it was in response to my post about the word Poltroonery, and it mentioned autological words. I had never heard of this concept and so searched further. I found a website that clearly described what an autological word was and it matched with my friends definition. There was also a list of autological words and a definition of a heterological word. If you are a bit of a word nerd you might be thinking the a heterological word, is a word that only dates Antonyms (words that is opposite in meaning to that word), but that is not the case (you may not be laughing, but I found that amusing).

Basically an autological word is a word that describes itself and a heterological word is a word that does not describe itself. Most words are heterological, only a few are autological. An example of an autological word is common, because common is a common word, or short, because short is a short word, also finite is a finite word. So if you can use the word in a sentence describing itself, then it is an autological word.

Here is a website with a list of autological words, some clear cut, others that may be less clearly autological.

Now my blog about learning something new, has helped me to learn something new!