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Have you ever thrown away a garbage can? My wife and I recently moved to a new house and found ourselves throwing out several old garbage cans. It’s kind of funny to think the thing you used to collect garbage has to be tossed in a larger garbage container.
Likewise, there are words that are used to describe aspects of themselves which I find equally entertaining. Etymology is a good one. Ever wonder what the etymology of etymology is? Well, it’s from a Middle English word: etimologie, which is from an Old French word: ethimologie, which can be traced back to the Latin etymologia, which, as you might have already guessed, goes back to the Ancient Greek, etumologia. Etumologia has two roots: etumon, or “true sense” and logia, or “the study of.”
Another good one might be when someone uses the word question as a question. For example, the other day I was telling my writing students that they should avoid clichés unless they’re using them in dialogue, because, well, people really do speak in clichés; so there’s nothing wrong with that. One of my students raised his hand and asked, “Question?”
I nodded and he went and asked away. But the idea here is that the word for a question became a question, as in: “David, can I ask a question, please?”
Can any of you loyal Wrap readers think of some other hall-of-mirror-type words?
Comments (29)
Comment
For a few years now I have had a minor infatuation with this concept. When I come across them, I refer to these kinds of examples under the heading “Thing describing itself.” For instance, “awkward” is an awkward word, isn’t it? I mean, it looks and sounds awkward. That is, it demonstrates what it describes. I have some other examples that I kind of cherish, but I’m reluctant to put them out there.
best,
Chris Haugen
posted by Chris Haugen on 7-20-2007 at 3:33 am
Not just words…
Douglas Hofstadter took over the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, renaming it “Metamagical Themas” (an anagram of the original column title). He was fascinated with self-referential words and sentences, and even more so with ‘neurotic’ self-reference (where the phrase or sentence is self-referential, but lies about itself). Thus, the hall-of-mirror-word concept is a microcosm of the larger self-reference concept.
The wikipedia article on him quotes his idea for the macro-hall-of-mirrors-of-all-time, a book which contained only book reviews of itself!
I didn’t see any of his columns in Sci-am, having been ‘in transit’ (i.e., in the Navy) during the entire run, but was given his book (named after the columns)by a friend who knew how much I had enjoyed Hofstadter’s other big-seller, Goedel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid. I was impressed by the lack of notice for the military’s favorite neurotic sentence:
On an otherwise blank page (possibly with page number and chapter heading) appears “This page left intentionally blank.”
Go figger!
—————
Perhaps, for the internet, the coined term “rwar” qualifies as a Hall-of-mirror-word, since there is no faster way to start an rwar than to claim that some statement is intended to start one?
ray
posted by onlyocelot on 7-20-2007 at 7:03 am
This reminds me of a discussion of “performative utterances” in a philosophy book I was proofreading. I discuss it in my blog (verbatim.blogs.com/verbatim/2006/04/performance_art.html).
The gist is that sometimes we actually DO something by the very act of SAYING it, as in “I promise…” — by saying that, you are in fact doing it (promising something, that is).
posted by Karen on 7-20-2007 at 7:21 am
There’s a drinking game involving cards where each value represents something the players must take part in. If a Jack, comes up, someone picks a category and play then continues around the table with each player naming something in the category.
The category I always like to choose is: “possible categories”.
Has anyone ever heard this hall-of-mirrors concept as “meta-something”?
posted by Jonathan on 7-20-2007 at 7:32 am
Verbing–Using of a noun or adjective as a verb (eg, “chairing the meeting,” “queer the deal,” “beer me, Marge”). “Verbing” is, of course, itself an example of verbing.
posted by Jef on 7-20-2007 at 8:10 am
Somebody somewhere had to be the first person to use the word “Neologism.”
posted by FourthRow on 7-20-2007 at 8:19 am
I always thought the word pretentious (in the meaning of something being overly showy or important) was pretentious itself.
posted by Jason! on 7-20-2007 at 8:30 am
Well there’s ‘aibohphobia’ - the fear of palindromes (not really a genuine phobia I believe).
Or ’sesquipedalian’ which means ‘characterised by the use of long words’.
Or the simple ‘abbr.’.
posted by haribo on 7-20-2007 at 9:21 am
How about the word “word” itself. That one has always intrigued me. It exists only to discuss its existence (and the existence of others as well).
posted by riverstone on 7-20-2007 at 9:22 am
Esoteric, meaning ‘of or relating to that which is known by a restricted number of people’ is a rather esoteric word.
posted by Sally on 7-20-2007 at 11:08 am
Although this has nothing to do with words or the above conversation.
I think that if I ever had to drive a mini-van. . .
a funny thing to do would be to paint flames on it.
posted by Janet on 7-20-2007 at 11:19 am
What is another word for thesaurus?
posted by Matt on 7-20-2007 at 11:58 am
Pedantic - the word is a little obscure for most non-pendants’ vocabulary.
Question - My dad called me up a while back, wanting to know if there’s a word for words or phrases only necessitated by technology - Okay, poor explanation. Things like “acoustic guitar” - before there was electric, they were all acoustic guitars… but they were just called guitars. Anyone?
posted by Meredith on 7-20-2007 at 12:23 pm
Many moons ago, I had some business cards printed up (this was long before you could do them on your home PC - heck, there WERE no home Pcs!).
On one side was printed, “The statement on the other side of this card is false.”
On the other side was printed, “The statement on the other side of this card is true.”
Sadist that I am, I used to give them to people that were tripping or stoned - or both.
It was amusing to watch them spend hours turning the card over and over and over. Cheap entertainment…
posted by Doc on 7-20-2007 at 12:23 pm
Meredith: These are known as retronyms. The most famous example is “World War I”
posted by Simon on 7-20-2007 at 12:54 pm
Simon:
Retronym. Of course. Thank you! (My dad thanks you, too.)
posted by Meredith on 7-20-2007 at 1:12 pm
I hate the modern usage of the word “nominal.” It means smallish, but modern use is ” I don’t want to really be specific.”
I’m really curious, and haven’t been able to find the first use of the term WW1. It must have been a pessimistic moment.
Word.
posted by Richard W. Crews on 7-20-2007 at 1:57 pm
Jonathan, I haven’t played Kings in years, but that is a great Jacks category!
posted by Sara on 7-20-2007 at 4:12 pm
I have one of these. I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely despise the phrase “pet peeve”. Problem is, this hatred of mine only seems to evince itself in sentences that begin “My biggest pet peeve is…”
Grr. I get those first four words out and then want to shoot myself in the jaw.
posted by Aemi on 7-20-2007 at 5:36 pm
similar to the Kings category, i want to have a themed party, where the theme is you come as your favorite themed party. It would be fun to guess what other peoples themes are supposed to be
posted by om on 7-21-2007 at 1:32 pm
just off the top of my head an incident from my early grammer school days comes to mind. we were well on our way to being able to read. at this time, we received ‘word lists’ to assist the expansion of our vocabulary. most were words we were, perhaps familiar with hearing but now had to recognize their spelling. one list contained the word ‘where’. i had given up trying to sound it out and asked my brother ‘what’s this word?’ he said ‘where’. i said ‘here’, pointing to it. he said ‘where’ and i felt the need to consult another source. i had another brother and sister and was quite frustrated before i realized i was not being ignored but their answer sounded like a question to me. finally, i suppose, i had made such a pest of myself that a sentence explained to me ‘that word w-h-e-r-e is where.’
posted by kathy on 7-21-2007 at 4:03 pm
although the use of pronouns can be unclear at best and utterly confusing out of the mouth of some people. they may start recounting an incident and identify all the participants briefly, in the beginning but by the third or fourth sentence the participants are all he or she and just which he did or said what to which other he or she?
posted by kathy on 7-21-2007 at 4:16 pm
There is a philosophy of everything–philosophy of mind, philosophy of language…what about the philosophy of philosophy?
posted by Anad on 7-21-2007 at 9:00 pm
Going along with what Kathy said, I worked at a summer camp where we used camp names (EX: Hummingbird, Sunflower). I wanted my camp name to be Guess. That way when people asked me what my name was I’d just tell them “Guess!”…
At another camp I worked at, we had a girl named Secret. That led to some confusion the first few days.
posted by Amy on 7-22-2007 at 2:11 pm
This is related to Kathy’s too. It reminds me of my favorite episode of Taxi, when Jim takes his driver’s test. “What’s a yellow light mean?” “Slow down!” “What’s…a…yellow…light…mean?” That was great!
posted by Jenn on 7-22-2007 at 11:08 pm
Not sure if this counts, but it makes me think of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: “My name means the shape I am.”
posted by Size on 7-23-2007 at 9:44 am
“I’m against picketing, I just don’t know how to show it.”
-Mitch Hedberg
posted by Matt on 7-23-2007 at 11:47 am
I believe the term that describes this best (the “meta”-something others were looking for) is “homological”. See the discussion here:
atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_homological.htm
Basically homological words are words that can describe themselves, and heterological words cannot describe themselves. That then leads to the paradox that if the word doesn’t describe itself (which is what the word means) then it accurately describes itself, and vice versa. Thinking about this is an excellent cure for a headache-free head :)
posted by Justin WIck on 7-25-2007 at 8:04 am
metacognition being mindful of what one’s mind is full of–thinking about what one is thinking about–there’s the cure to the headache-free head :^)
it’s kinda like when my friend said after eating ice cream–”man I have a serious ice cream headache” to which I responded, quit eating your ice cream so fast” to which he quipped “what, and miss this great headache”
it’s really about what you’re chasing
posted by mike on 7-26-2007 at 9:53 pm