Dec 10, 2012
Autological Words
The easiest way to put it is that an autological (homological) word describes itself.
Common examples: the word short is short, the word polysyllabic is polysyllabic, and my favorite- the word subtle is pretty subtle. The opposite of autological words are heterological words. E.g. Long is not a long word.
So people like to ask "is heterological a heterological word?" I'll dedicate a full post to this later, but if you'd like to read more about it, you can look up the Grelling-Nelson paradox.