The English Oracle

Single word meaning a statement which is proving itself wrong

--------------------------------------------------
Rise to the top 3% as a developer or hire one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Puzzle Game 2 Looping

--

Chapters
00:00 Single Word Meaning A Statement Which Is Proving Itself Wrong
00:25 Answer 1 Score 10
00:33 Answer 2 Score 11
00:43 Accepted Answer Score 8
01:06 Answer 4 Score 1
01:53 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#singlewordrequests

#avk47



ANSWER 1

Score 11


Incongruous, inconsistent, or paradoxical is sufficient.




ANSWER 2

Score 10


It is said to be self-contradictory.




ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 8


I like self-refuting.

  • self-contradictory and self-refuting imply an logical contradiction
  • oxymoron implies only a surface contradiction, like the living dead or jumbo shrimp
  • paradoxical implies a genuine question about its truth value



ANSWER 4

Score 1


Responding to a couple points here...

Oxymoron(ic) can only be used in reference to a phrase - I think only a noun phrase - but not to a statement. And officially, I think, it should be used when the apparent contradiction is resolved when you understand what the phrase is referring to. (Like, the first time you hear "living dead" you're like, "WTF? Ohhhhhh... it's zombies!" And then it makes sense.") If it's really not resolvable, but is just an error, like "free-market communist", then it would be a contradiction in terms. (Though in common usage, I think you can use oxymoron for both.)

For a complete statement, you could use simply use self-contradictory, self-negating... I actually stumbled here looking for the same thing. I'm sure there's a cool latin phrase somewhere...