Word.ws English Dictionary

observer's paradox

observer's paradox noun: the situation in which a phenomenon being observed for study is unintentionally influenced by the presence of the observer.

Noun

observer's paradox (uncountable)

  1. The situation in which a phenomenon being observed for study is unintentionally influenced by the presence of the observer.
    • These conditions have served to diminish what is known as the observer’s paradox[…], so that the data this exploration draws on can be regarded as naturally occurring communication, i.e. as data “that would have occurred regardless of the investigator’s interventions or research aspirations”[…].[2022, Sabine Fiedler, Cyril Robert Brosch, “Methods and data” (chapter 5), in Esperanto – Lingua Franca and Language Community, John Benjamins Publishing Company, →DOI, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, page 22

Questions about observer's paradox

What does observer's paradox mean?
Observer's paradox means the situation in which a phenomenon being observed for study is unintentionally influenced by the presence of the observer.
What part of speech is observer's paradox?
Observer's paradox is a noun.

Words near observer's paradox in the dictionary

  1. observedly
  2. observedst
  3. observee
  4. observees
  5. observer
  6. observer's paradox
  7. observeress
  8. observeresses
  9. observerless
  10. observers
  11. observership

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: observer's 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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