Describing words or concepts that don't apply to themselves, or relating to logical paradoxes about self-reference.
From Greek hetero- (different) + logical, formalized in 20th-century philosophical logic to describe self-referential contradictions. The concept emerged from discussions of paradoxes like Grelling's paradox.
The word 'heterological' itself is heterological—it describes words that don't apply to themselves, but the word 'heterological' doesn't apply to itself, creating a beautiful paradox that broke a lot of mathematicians' brains!
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