THE WORD FOR WORD IS WORD

12 fun language paradoxes and words that describe themselves

Image: Ryoji Iwata

Autological words? Language paradoxes? Join us in this article to explore the fun consequences of self-referential language.

Autological words or homological words are words that happen to express a property that they themselves possess. Like noun is a noun, or English is actually English, these examples of recursive meaning within a word can be quite fun to think about.

The opposite of an autological word would be a heterological word, meaning one that doesn’t apply to itself. For example, the word long isn’t a long word itself, and monosyllabic has more than one syllable.

A paradox arises when one tries to answer the question: "Is heterological a heterological word itself? Before reading further, try to make the math in your head, and you will soon find that giving a straight answer is almost impossible without modifying the original definitions of heterological and autological.

Before this starts giving you a headache, we are not here to rummage into borderline mathematical problems within the logical structure of modern English, so don’t worry! Autological words can be a lot of fun on their own, even without pesky paradoxes popping up. Here are some examples.

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This is a real word present in the English dictionary, in case you are wondering. Humorously popularized by The Simpsons, embiggened is quite a fun example, since it is a sort of ungainly enlargement of itself.

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This could very much depend on context, but interesting derives from the Anglo-Norman word interesse, and a blend of an older Latin word that referred to something important and an Old French expression relating to damage or loss. So, interesting is a somewhat interesting word by itself, at least if you like etymologies. Arguably, one could also say that it is a heterological word, since interesting is the go-to word for most people when they don’t really have anything interesting to say about something.

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Not for you maybe, but pronounceable is a difficult word to pronounce for many people, particularly for people who aren’t native speakers of English.

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Ever heard of this one before? Don’t worry, me neither. Lexiphanic means something - or someone - that uses pretentious or bombastic language.

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In this list! Ha!

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Could we give unhyphenated a hyphen just for the sake of ruining this self-descriptive madness? Maybe. But it wouldn’t make too much sense. Hyphenated, on the other hand, is heterological, as it fails to describe itself.

Image: Sincerely Media

I love this one. If you don’t get it, count the syllables! Multisyllabic is also a related autological word.

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A long, unnecessary word that literally means "a long word". It also derives from the Latin root sēsquipedālis, which means "a foot and a half long".

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Lots of vowels in this one, so… it passes the autological test.

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Who even conceived this word? Just like the literary monster, this word is exactly what it means, a combination of two other words, or a portmanteau (that just happens to be autological too!).

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In the context of this list. Don’t worry, we are almost at the end.

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Funnily enough, this word also happens to be a buzzword. It may be even more popular than the actual buzzwords it refers to.

If you loved these autological words, check out our other articles! At Dictionary Scoop we explore all language-related topics and trivia, from words with strange properties like the ones in this list to untranslatable ones, or the history and etymology behind many English words.

Heists and hustles: 10 infamous crimes that shocked the world

Image: Tima Miroshnichenko

People have always been drawn to stories of the impossible, and few tales spark more fascination than a daring heist. There’s something thrilling about the idea of guards, locks, and vaults being outwitted by clever minds with even stranger plans. Sometimes it’s a priceless masterpiece disappearing in broad daylight, other times it’s something as unexpected as maple syrup. From the ingenious to the downright bizarre, history is filled with thefts that sound more like adventure novels than real life. Let’s step into the shadows and explore some of the most astonishing heists ever carried out.

Image: The Free Birds

Before she became the ultimate symbol of art itself, the Mona Lisa pulled off a vanishing act worthy of a magician. In 1911, a sneaky handyman slipped into the Louvre, spent the night hidden among the galleries, and the next morning walked out with Leonardo’s masterpiece tucked under his arm.

Paris was stunned. For two long years, all that remained was a blank space on the wall—and strangely enough, people flocked to the museum just to stare at the absence. When the painting finally resurfaced, the heist had transformed it from a celebrated portrait into a global icon, proving that sometimes disappearing from the public eye can make something even more valuable.

Image: Prahant Designing Studio

In the heart of Antwerp’s diamond district in Belgium sat a vault so secure it was considered untouchable. Motion detectors, magnetic locks, heat sensors—every layer was designed like a fortress of light and steel. Yet in 2003, a band of thieves slipped past it all as if stepping through lace.

The robbers picked the locks with surgical precision, tricked cameras with clever decoys, and even masked their body heat to fool the sensors. By the time the heist was discovered, more than $100 million in diamonds and jewels had vanished into the night. What makes the story legendary is that most of the treasure has never resurfaced, leaving the world to wonder how the "heist of the century" was pulled off so cleanly.

Image: Tanya Barrow

Picture this: a moonlit night in the quiet English countryside, the steady rhythm of a Royal Mail train echoing through the dark. Suddenly, the train screeches to a halt—robbers in masks have stopped it dead in its tracks. Inside, sacks stuffed with banknotes are waiting to be claimed. The gang managed to escape with £2.6 million—worth about £73.7 million today—, a sum that was never recovered.

Although they were captured a short time later, the audacity of the crime captured the world’s imagination, inspiring headlines, numerous books, and films. Even decades later, the Great Train Robbery of 1963 feels less like history and more like the plot of a thrilling adventure novel.

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High above the clouds, a mystery took flight. In 1971, a calm, neatly dressed passenger who gave the name D. B. Cooper handed a note to a flight attendant—he was hijacking the plane. His demands were unusual yet precise: $200,000 in small bills and four parachutes.

Once the ransom was delivered, the Boeing 727 lifted off again into a stormy night over the Pacific Northwest. Then came the moment that turned him into a legend: Cooper opened the rear stairway and leapt into the darkness, vanishing into the wind and rain. No trace of him—or the cash—was ever found. Decades later, his daring escape remains America’s favorite riddle in the sky.

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On a chilly March night in 1990, two men in police uniforms knocked politely on the side door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The guards, thinking it was routine business, let them inside. By the time the sun rose, the museum had been stripped of 13 masterpieces—including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas—worth an estimated half a billion dollars.

The strangest detail? The thieves left behind other valuable paintings, choosing their loot with puzzling precision. To this day, the crime remains unsolved, and the museum has kept the empty frames on the walls. Visitors still stop to stare, as if those blank outlines tell a story louder than the art itself: a mystery frozen in time.

Image: Deng Xiang

Legends linger long on island shores, and Bermuda has one that still stirs the imagination. In 1975, the Tucker’s Cross—a 22-karat gold cross set with brilliant emeralds—was stolen from a local museum. The artifact had been pulled from the depths of a centuries-old Spanish shipwreck, a jewel of history as much as of craftsmanship. Its disappearance was swift, its recovery nonexistent. Decades later, no trace has surfaced, ensuring the Tucker’s Cross remains one of the Caribbean’s most enduring unsolved mysteries.

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Who says a heist has to be about diamonds and cash? In Quebec, between 2011 and 2012, thieves quietly tapped into a warehouse and siphoned away nearly 3,000 tons of maple syrup—that’s over 6 million pounds of the sticky stuff.

Valued at around $18 million, it became known as "liquid gold." The thought is almost comical: breakfast pancakes crowned with a topping more valuable than some gemstones. Even the sweetest prize can tempt the cleverest crooks!

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In 1950, an ordinary winter night turned remarkable when a band of thieves, their faces hidden behind cheap Halloween masks, slipped into the Brink’s armored car depot in Boston. Moving with military precision, they bound the guards and hauled away $2.7 million in cash, checks, and money orders—worth more than $30 million in today’s money.

For years, the trail stayed ice cold, and the job was praised as flawless. So perfect was the plan that investigators dubbed it the "crime of the century," and it set the benchmark for every heist that followed.

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December 1978, New York’s JFK Airport. What began as just another shift in the cargo terminal suddenly shifted into crime lore. A crew of thieves bypassed security and stormed the vault, vanishing with roughly $5 million in cash and close to $1 million in glittering jewels.

The sheer audacity—pulling off a multimillion-dollar heist in one of the busiest airports in the world—left Americans both shocked and fascinated. Decades later, the Lufthansa robbery still ranks among the boldest airport crimes in history.

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Imagine pulling off one of the biggest bank heists in California history—only to be spoiled by a pizza party. That’s exactly what happened in 1972, when a group of burglars spent weeks digging a tunnel into the United California Bank in Laguna Niguel. Their prize was staggering: about $9 million in cash, worth more than $60 million in today’s money.

For a moment, it looked like the perfect crime. But after the adrenaline wore off, the crew sat down to celebrate with pizza, leaving greasy fingerprints on the plates. Those smudges became the breadcrumbs that led investigators right to them, proving that sometimes the smallest slip can topple the grandest scheme.