• Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    The hyphen has long been killed by the Internet. It suffered a worse fate than “literally”; it faded into nothingness without even so much as a “where is it?”

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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    15 minutes ago

    There’s actually a whole class of these words. They’re called heterological words.

    Their opposite, autological (or homological) words are words that do describe themselves. “Autological” is an autological word because it describes itself.

    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. If you say no, then it does describe itself therefore it is heterological. Bit of a head scratcher.

    This is the Grelling-Nelson paradox.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

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

    • ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world
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      2 hours 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.

    • sp3ctr4l
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      7 hours ago

      My favorite homological word:

      Sesquipedalian.

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

      Sesquipedalian is a sesquipedalian word.

    • Vespair@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      This seems to apply to a number of speech impediments, as “rhotacism” is the term for people with difficulty saying R sounds and apparently “stutter” is a particularly difficult word for people with stutters.

  • psx_crab
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    7 hours ago

    !hyphenated.

    Edit: lol my intention isn’t to link a community but to replicate the “Not” statement like in coding.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      hyphenated words are on their way out. not much use for the hyphen in most cases.