What are some examples of paradoxical words?

The word "non-hyphenated" is a paradoxical word in that it is a word about words, but it does not describe itself.

I have two questions:

• Is there a name for these types of paradoxical words?
• What are some other examples of them?

Solution 1:

As Lawrence notes, such a word is heterological.

Heterological adjective

A word that does not apply to itself

Wikipedia

By contrast a word which does describe itself is autological or homological.

The word heterological is not merely "paradoxical" in that it describes words which don't describe themselves, it also leads to a paradox all of its own. Consider the question: is the word "heterological" itself heterological or autological?

Given the definition of "heterological", it follows that if "heterological" is heterological then it's autological, and if it's autological then it's heterological.

This is known as the Grelling-Nelson Paradox, and has similarities to the famous paradox of Bertrand Russell based the "set of all sets which don't contain themselves" and asks "Does such a set contain itself?"

Solution 2:

Uncategorised.

That's a category if you ask me.