Speaking of Words
By MICHAEL FERBER
The first line of a typically baffling poem by Gertrude Stein reads “five words in a line.” This noun phrase is self-referential, an example of what it means. Some friends and I, with too much time on our hands, have long been collecting examples of such expressions, which we call “autonyms.” In an essay published in the 1950s, the literary scholar William K. Wimsatt, Jr., referred to “autological” terms and gave a few examples, such as “word.” His examples were all individual words, but the concept need not be restricted to them.
Here are some autonyms. Don’t swallow them without chewing them first.
word
noun
two words
exactly three words
three more words
more than three words
half a dozen words or so
a few short words
three English words
trois mots français
drei Deutsche Wörter
four syllables
erudite, ostentatious Latinate vocabulary
good old little everyday English words
Once you get the idea, it’s fun to dream them up. It can be infectious, however. You may find yourself pouncing on examples in print, or (worse) in conversations with friends. “Hey, you just made an autonym!” That will put a stop to the conversation, and maybe the friendship. So be careful.
A good one to ponder is “dead metaphor.” Once upon a time it must have been a fresh idea to call the four uprights under a table top “legs.” It was a metaphor, because they aren’t literally legs. But now “legs” is the proper term for those supports, and we are not likely to imagine our coffee table as a sleeping quadruped that might sit up at any moment, stretch, and walk into the next room, though that might happen in a poem or cartoon. In real life, table “legs” are a dead metaphor, like the “head” or “foot” of a bed. Metaphors, however, not being animals or plants, are not literally alive so they cannot literally be dead. They are metaphorically dead when their originally metaphorical character is eroded or bleached through frequent usage. But we use the phrase “dead metaphor” so often that it too has lost its semantic vigor and grown inert or literal. So “dead metaphor” is itself a dead metaphor and therefore an autonym. At least I think so, but every now and then I feel puzzled about it and have to work it out again.
Here are a few more autonyms of a special sort:
letters
ten letters
mispelling
tyypo
abbr.
garnama, or maganar
Times New Roman font
entry on a list
These only work in print, and in a certain font, but autonyms don’t have to be spoken to qualify as autonyms.
Note that “noun” is an autonym but “verb” is not, because “verb” is a noun. But we could make it a verb, we could verbify it, and then “verbify” would be an autonym, or would it? “Adjectival” is an adjective and “adverbially” is an adverb, but the question arises as to whether the concept of self-reference or any reference can apply to any part of speech but nouns (and noun phrases). Theories of language that claim that words refer to things and events tacitly assume that all words are nouns or pronouns. What does “the” refer to? What does “to” refer to? But if we loosen the concept of reference a little we might admit non-nouns, and even sentences, into the category.
So consider these possibilities:
this
not that
not another
This is a sentence.
So is this.
not a sentence
Is this a question? No, this is an answer.
These may be dubious, but better to be hospitable, especially during the holiday season.
The poet and scholar John Hollander wrote a brilliantly charming book called Rhyme’s Reason, in which he defined all the major forms of verse in those same forms of verse. For instance:
A quatrain has four lines
As one can plainly see:
One of its strict designs
Comes rhymed abab.
The ballad stanza’s four short lines
Are very often heard;
The second and the fourth lines rhyme,
But not the first and third.
These might be called autonymical poems.
In the same spirit, consider these, in prose:
A definition of a word is an explanation of its meaning.
An ellipse is a geometrical figure; an ellipsis, rhetorical.
An anacoluthon is a sentence, or rather an apparent sentence, which, while beginning in one construction, the speaker changes course in the middle and ends it another way.
There is no disputing the fact that some sentences begin with great confidence, or perhaps assertiveness is a better word, and then in the middle, or thereabouts, they seem to, or really do, in my opinion, lose their force or whatever and, as it were, sort of peter out.
I will end with one more like these, but if you haven’t read Homer lately it may not make much sense. Come to think of it, if you haven’t read Homer lately, you had better drop everything and do it. There is a new translation of the Iliad by Emily Wilson that has gotten a lot of attention, though I prefer the one by Caroline Alexander (2015); there are many more good versions of both the Iliad and the Odyssey in print. So, if you’re ready now, here it is:
Just as, when we want to elucidate a word by looking it up in a dictionary, we are sometimes sidetracked by the sight of other entries, and read them instead, one definition or etymology leading to another, especially if it is a good dictionary, the best being the Oxford English Dictionary, of course, especially for its historical examples, until we forget what we originally sought, if our powers of concentration are weak or our interests broad, so the Homeric simile, beginning with a one-to-one comparison of an event or scene with another from a different realm, sometimes develops the comparison until it has an interest and substantiality of its own and no longer refers part by part to what occasioned it.
Happy Holidays.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.
Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.
