autological

I’m sticking with grammar words this week. Assuming you’re still here, an autological word is a word, usually an adjective (i.e. a describing word like ‘beautiful’ or ‘transparent’) that expresses a property it also possesses. Got it? Nope? Let’s look at an example – ‘word’ is autological. Because the word ‘word’ is also a word.

Assuming that didn’t make your head explode, here are some slightly less ridiculous examples:

• ‘longer’, because it’s a longer word than ‘long’

• ‘elongated’, because it’s an elongated version of ‘long’

• pentasyllabic (which has nothing to do with ‘long’), because it means having five syllables, and it has five syllables.

BOOM.

You can find lots more examples of autological words here to impress your friends with (unless your friends are cool).

Let’s not forget the etymology (god forbid!). In this case ‘auto’ as a prefix means ‘self’ (like ‘automobile’ i.e. something that moves by itself, or autopilot i.e. flying itself). And ‘logical’ means ‘true’ (kind of).

Autological words are also called homological words, ‘homos’ being the Greek word for ‘same’. The opposite of an autological word is a heterological one, which, you can probably guess, is where the meaning of the word doesn’t apply to itself. Like ‘long’ which is actually a short word, and ‘monosyllabic’ which most definitely isn’t made up of one syllable.

loophole

A loophole is one of those legally ambiguous things that celebrities (I’m looking at you Take That/Jimmy Carr) exploit to avoid paying tax. The word itself has an interesting backstory, and actually doesn’t have anything to do with loops. OOOH.

Allow me to take you back to the 16th century. There’s peasants and mud everywhere. It’s probably raining. You’re looking up at a medieval stone castle, which has slits in it for people to shoot arrows out of, with little risk of being hit by their attackers (unless they’re Kevin Costner). And these were known as… wait for it… loopholes. But they’re not called this because they (sort of) look like loops. The name comes from the Dutch word lûpen, which means ‘to watch’. So it’s literally a hole to watch out of (I probably didn’t need to explain that, did I?).

It’s not entirely clear how the meaning of loophole changed from window you shoot stuff out of to tax dodging. It’s more likely that the modern sense of loophole is related to actual loops, rather than windows (especially as you close a loophole). There’s also a second theory that it comes from another Dutch word loopgat (which isn’t used anymore), which describes a hole which someone or something could escape through.

contronym

This is a bit of a scary grammar term (wait! Come back!). It describes single words that have two contradictory meanings. Here are some examples:

• bolt: to stick something together, or to run the hell away

• dust: to put dust on something, or take it off

• peer: someone who’s super-posh, or someone who’s equal

• sanction: to approve something, or to boycott it

• bound: tied up, or bouncing about

• oversight: to watch over something, or to miss or omit it.

(I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – ENGLISH IS A VERY STUPID LANGUAGE.)

Janus – his name has ‘anus’ in it, tee hee.

The word itself was coined by one Jack Herring in 1962. I’m afraid I don’t know who Jack Herring is, sorry. Although I do enjoy a fish-based name, which is why I’ve included this bit of info here.

The prefix ‘contra’ means ‘against’ or ‘opposite’, which is why ‘contronym’ is also sometimes spelled ‘contranym’ (I think either is fine TBH). Contronyms are also called auto-antonyms, which is boring, and Janus words, which is a bit more interesting. This is after the Roman two-faced god (he literally had two faces – he wasn’t talking behind the other gods’ backs). Janus was the god of (deep breath) beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames and endings. He’s got two faces because one is looking towards the past, and the other towards the future apparently (dunno what happens if he turns round). Presumably it’s the two-faced bit which applies to contronyms.

pareidolia

We’ve probably all experienced pareidolia to some extent. Don’t worry, it isn’t another world-ending pandemic. Pareidolia is the word for when we humans find shapes in abstract patterns or inanimate objects. So when you next see a face in the trunk of a tree or a penis in the clouds (come on, we’ve all done it. No? Just me?) you’ll be able to show off to whoever you’re with that you’re experiencing pareidolia. It also applies to sounds – so if you think you’re hearing a hidden message in a piece of music, you probably aren’t – it’s just that pesky pareidolia.

Etymology-wise, the word itself is unsurprisingly Greek: para means ‘beside, alongside, instead [of]’ and eidōlon means ‘image, form, shape’.

So why do we do it? Evolutionary psychologists reckon that pareidolia helped our ancestors survive. There are two reasons for this. One is that babies who couldn’t recognise faces smiled less, which meant their parents cared about them less (mean). So they evolved to recognise faces to make sure their ma and pa would love them and, ultimately, protect them. The second one is to do with predators – in (very) simple terms, you’re more likely to run away from something that has a face than something that doesn’t. So it makes sense to see a face in anything that’s potentially threatening and just peg it.

Pareidolia used to be considered a sign of madness. And studies do show that people suffering from neuroses are more likely to experience it, as are people who in a negative mood. That might be because when we’re pissed off we’re on higher alert for danger, so more likely to see things that aren’t there. Women are also more likely to experience pareidolia, which is possibly due to the fact that we’re generally better than men. Sorry, better than men at using facial expressions to recognise emotions.

One of the most famous examples of pareidolia is the face on Mars. Located in the Cydonia region of the planet, it was first photographed by the Viking 1 spacecraft on 25 July 1976.

It’s a face on Mars!

Oh no it isn’t.

And in 2004, a ten-year-old cheese sandwich which supposedly has the image of the Virgin Mary burned on it sold for $28,000 on eBay. Where there’s pareidolia there’s brass, apparently…