Word.ws English Dictionary

Grelling-Nelson paradox

Grelling-Nelson paradox proper noun: a semantic paradox of self-reference, where, supposing that "autological" means "self-describing" and "heterological" means "not self-describing", then "heterological" itself cannot be meaningfully classified as either of the two.

Proper noun

the Grelling-Nelson paradox

  1. A semantic paradox of self-reference, where, supposing that "autological" means "self-describing" and "heterological" means "not self-describing", then "heterological" itself cannot be meaningfully classified as either of the two.

Origin of Grelling-Nelson paradox

Formulated in 1908 by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson.

Questions about Grelling-Nelson paradox

What does Grelling-Nelson paradox mean?
Grelling-Nelson paradox means a semantic paradox of self-reference, where, supposing that "autological" means "self-describing" and "heterological" means "not self-describing", then "heterological" itself cannot be meaningfully classified as either of the two.
What part of speech is Grelling-Nelson paradox?
Grelling-Nelson paradox is a proper noun.

Words near Grelling-Nelson paradox in the dictionary

  1. grelfies
  2. Grell
  3. Grella
  4. Grellas
  5. Grelling
  6. Grelling-Nelson paradox
  7. Grells
  8. grem
  9. gremial
  10. gremials
  11. Gremillion

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Grelling-Nelson 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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