PARADOXES

PARADOXES

Paradoxe sentences with gerunds for the book.

● It is an interesting paradox that drinking a lot of water can often make you feel thirsty.

● Not having a fashion is a fashion; that's a paradox.

EtymologyEdit

From paradoxum, (parádoxos,“unexpected, strange”).

paradox (plural paradoxes)

1. An apparently self-contradictory statement, which can only be true if it is false, and vice versa. 

   "This sentence is false" is a paradox.

   • 1962, Abraham Wolf, Textbook of Logic‎^[1], page 255:
     

     According to one version of an ancient paradox, an Athenian is supposed to say "I am a liar." It is then argued that if the statement is true, then he is telling the truth, and is therefore not a liar […]

2. A counterintuitive conclusion or outcome. ^usage syn.

   It is an interesting paradox that drinking a lot of water can often make you feel thirsty.

3. A claim that two apparently contradictory ideas are true. ^transl.

   Not having a fashion is a fashion; that's a paradox.

4. An unanswerable question or difficult puzzle, particularly one which leads to a deeper truth.

   • And only by dismantling our preconceptions of age can we be free to understand the paradox: How young are the old?

Usage notesEdit

• (self-contradictory statement ^{def. transl.}): A statement which contradicts itself in this fashion is a paradox; two statements which contradict each other are an antinomy.

SynonymsEdit

• (counterintuitive outcome ^def. usage): shocker (informal)
• (person or thing with contradictory properties,  contradiction
• (unanswerable question ): puzzle, quandary, riddle, enigma, koan