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A word that possesses the very semantic property or quality that it expresses; a self-describing word.
From Ancient Greek αὐτός (autós, 'self') and λόγος (lógos, 'word'). The concept of autological words (also termed homological words) was introduced in 1908 by German mathematicians Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson in their study of semantic antinomies, known famously as the Grelling–Nelson paradox. An autological word applies truthfully to itself: the word 'word' is itself an English word; 'noun' is grammatically a noun; 'English' is written in English; 'pentasyllabic' contains exactly five syllables (pen-ta-syl-la-bic); 'short' is a short 5-letter word; and 'unhyphenated' contains no hyphens. In contrast, 'heterological' words do not describe themselves (e.g., 'monosyllabic' has five syllables, not one; 'hyphenated' has no hyphen).
Test any English word to discover self-descriptive linguistic properties:
Verified English words exemplifying autological word (homological word) with Scrabble scores
Linguistic definitions, etymological origins, and tournament usage
The paradox asks: Is the word 'heterological' (meaning 'not self-describing') autological or heterological? If it describes itself, then it is heterological, meaning it does not describe itself. If it does not describe itself, then it is heterological, which means it DOES describe itself. This paradox helped shape modern mathematical logic.