Comment on English is a strange language.

Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My favorite homological word:

  Sesquipedalian:

  An unnecessarily long word, or a person who uses unnecessarily long words.

  Sesquipedalian is a sesquipedalian word.

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  • Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oooh, that’s a good one! Its use also makes its user described by itself. Neat!

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• pyre@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  the new administration has banned the use of homological words so be careful.

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• Quicky@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I used to be really interested in paradoxes, but I decided in my old age that they’re all just bloody annoying and pointless. 99% of paradoxes are just linguistics. All these philosophers who spent their lives debating them are infuriating bastards. “Oh you’ve come up with another unsolvable word puzzle have you? Well that’s language for you - an abstraction developed by the fallible. Congratulations mate, great use of everyone’s time.”

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  • Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    OK, Grandpa, back to bed. j/k j/k :)

    We have multiple industries (movie/tv/gaming/sports) whose main focus is “wasting” time. Finding some enjoyment in linguistics and logic certainly isn’t any more of a waste.

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    • Quicky@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Haha I’m just being dismissive, but greater minds than mine have made the same point.  

      I read something a while back about Ludwig Wittgenstein (in a YouTube comment of all places). He basically said “It turns out that Philosophy, my entire life’s work, is just a language game and, in the end just like a game, it can be fun and challenging, but ultimately meaningless.” Everyone disagreed then immediately went back to playing their own games, trying to prove him wrong by proving him right.

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• RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why is autological an autological word?

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  • blujan@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because it refers to itself, it’s like the trivial case

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    • RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How does it refer to itself?

      It would need to already have been referring to itself to refer to itself

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      • blujan@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I think you’re right, it made sense earlier but not anymore

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      • Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I think you’re right. There’s a bit of an infinite regress problem, isn’t there?

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• ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Isn’t there a mistake in your first statement about the word heterological? If I say yes the word heterological is heterological it means that it doesn’t fall into the class of words that it describes and so it is heterological, because as you’ve defined heterological words do not describe themselves

  Here’s a fun question, though: is “heterological” a heterological word? If you say yes, then that means it does not describe itself and therefore it is not heterological.

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  • Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’re correct. I had an extra not in there! Good catch.

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    • Amanduh@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s how you know it’s a real head scratcher

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    • ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I was actually referring to the other “not” that was at the end, but it only shows why it is paradoxical and how confusing nature of predication is in languages, as in this question appears to be a case of Russell’s paradox of sets

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      • Enkers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Just a good reason not to dabble in paradoxes before you’ve had some coffee. lol

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• jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You’re the substitute teacher who wouldn’t let us play Heads Up Seven Up.

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