Word.ws English Dictionary

grandfather paradox

grandfather paradox noun: the paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past.

Noun

grandfather paradox (plural grandfather paradoxes)

  1. The paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past.

Forms of grandfather paradox

pluralgrandfather paradoxes

Origin of grandfather paradox

From the paradox proposed by the French author René Barjavel in 1944 in his book Le Voyageur Imprudent, translated into English as Future Times Three; in its original form the paradox of one person going back to the past and killing their grandfather before the latter fathered the traveler's father, thus preventing the time traveler from ever being conceived in the first place.

Questions about grandfather paradox

What does grandfather paradox mean?
Grandfather paradox means the paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past.
What part of speech is grandfather paradox?
Grandfather paradox is a noun.
What is the plural of grandfather paradox?
The plural of grandfather paradox is grandfather paradoxes.

Words near grandfather paradox in the dictionary

  1. grandfather clause
  2. grandfather clauses
  3. grandfather clock
  4. grandfather clocks
  5. grandfather in
  6. grandfather paradox
  7. grandfather paradoxes
  8. grandfather rights
  9. grandfather shirt
  10. grandfather shirts
  11. grandfather's beard

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grandfather paradox (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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