Other forms: paradoxes
A paradox is a statement that contradicts itself and still seems to hold. This sentence is false is the classic one: call it true and it turns false, call it false and it turns true. Or the road that gets more crowded the wider you build it.
The word reaches past logic puzzles. A person or a situation can be a paradox — a shy man who loves the stage, a rich country where nobody can buy a house. Science borrows it for results that clash with common sense: the twin paradox, Zeno's paradox of the runner who never arrives. The adjective is paradoxical, and paradoxically opens a sentence where things came out backwards: paradoxically, the extra lane made the journey slower. A paradox is not a plain contradiction — a contradiction is simply wrong, while a paradox survives being wrong.
1nounparadoxA statement that contradicts itself yet seems true, or that reaches an impossible conclusion by sound steps.~98%
“The barber paradox asks who shaves the barber who shaves everyone who does not shave himself.”
2nounsituationA person, thing or situation that combines qualities which should not fit together.~2%
“He is a paradox: a banker who gives away most of what he earns.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
paradox is a kind of statement.
Paradox came through Middle French paradoxe and Latin paradoxum from Ancient Greek παράδοξος, which meant 'unexpected, strange'. The Greeks used it for a claim that ran against what everybody took for granted. That is still the test: a paradox is not merely odd, it is odd in a way you cannot argue away.
Proto-Indo-European
*deḱ-
Ancient Greek
παράδοξος — unexpected, strange
Latin
paradoxum
Middle French
paradoxe
English, today
paradox
From Middle French paradoxe, from Latin paradoxum, from Ancient Greek παράδοξος (“unexpected, strange”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA