Is there a term for a word that's recursive in its meaning? (see example for clarification)

terminology

For example, when someone uses the word "pedantic," he actually comes off as a pedant. Putting aside my opinion that "pedantic" is, in itself, pedantic, along with the obvious irony, is there a word, expression, or phrase that captures this sentiment?

I will edit my post accordingly if I am being unclear. Thank you in advance.

Solution 1:

Your question is a little bit complicated to me, but do you mean a self-referencing word?

If so, then it is usually called an autological word or an autonym.

Autogram - A sentence that describes itself in the sense of providing an inventory of its own characters.

This sentence has five words.

This sentence contains nine syllables.

Reflexive (sentence)

A sentence where the subject and object are the same (Sources: Reflexive verb, pronoun).

The man washed himself.

Hofstadster's Law

Hofstadter's law is a self-referential time-related adage, coined by Douglas Hofstadter and named after him.

Any task you're planning to complete will always take longer than expected - even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account. Even if you know a project will overrun, and build that knowledge into your planning, it'll simply overrun your new estimated finish time, too, Hofstadter says.

(Source: The Guardian)

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Latin for after this, therefore because of this. It means a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." Sometimes shortened post hoc.