Talk:Wooden iron

Philosophy Low‑importance

	Philosophy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Almost autological or oxymoronic[edit]

I don't know the name of this type of word. Maybe a name hasn't been invented yet for it. Wooden iron and sideroxylon, as well as oxymoron, are words that are, themselves, examples of the concept that they signify. The concept is "a predicate that consists of two opposing characteristics. "Sideroxylon" means "iron wood." "Oxymoron" means "sharp dull." The same would apply to other words that refer to two opposites. I could make up many of them, such as obesotenuon (fat thin) or longobrevon (tall short), or any other conflation of opposites. At present, there is a misunderstanding about "sideroxylon" because the Wikipedia article on that topic only describes a type of vegetation. I plan to create a disambiguation article.Lestrade 18:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

I made an attempt to create the article Sideroxylon (oxymoron) a few minutes ago.Lestrade 13:55, 18 July 2007 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

The word "sideroxylon" in English is simply a genus of trees with a notably hard wood, which is also known as "ironwood" because of it's hardness. The german word "sideroxylon" is a translation of the English term "wooden iron" that is the subject of this article (or perhaps more accurately, the English term "wooden iron" is a translation of the German term "sideroxylon"), but I can't find any instance of the word being used in an English text in the way it's being used in this article (ie. with the German meaning.) It's not in any dictionary I can find in that context either. Somerandomnerd 12:34, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Look in the English translation of Schopenhauer's works. The citations are in the article and at Sideroxylon (oxymoron).Lestrade 18:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

That's my point though; with a basic understanding of the German, break down the German original text alongside the translation and you'll see what I'm saying;

Sonnen und Planeten- Suns and planets,

ohne ein Auge, das sie sieht,- with no eye to see them,

und ein Verstand, der sie erkennt, lassen sich zwar mit Worten, sagen: aber diese Worte - and no understanding to know them, can of course be spoken of in words,

, sind für die Vorstellung- but for the representation [these words are],

ein Sideroxylon.- a sideroxylon, an iron–wood.

The translation you're citing cites the original German compound word "sideroxylon", then also provides a literal translation "an iron wood." It's not using the word in an English context. I don't know if it's been used elsewhere, but I can only find uses of it referring specifically to the genus of trees.

I could be wrong, but I'm not yet convinced. Somerandomnerd 00:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Schopenhauer used the word sideroxylon, which is Greek for iron wood, to express a contradiction between an adjective and its noun. He also used the German words hölzernes Eisen (wooden iron) for the same purpose. The translator of his works into English, E. F. J. Payne, Jr., used the English phrase wooden iron as a translation of both sideroxylon and hölzernes Eisen. This can be verified by looking into the Dover paperback edition of The World as Will and Representation.Lestrade 01:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

It's not limited to Schopenhauer, though it may always be inspired by him. Francis Herbert Bradley,The Presuppositions of Critical History (1874). "It is a standing contradiction, a barbarous sideroxylon. If this is all that Baur had in his mind, it certainly involves no antagonism to critical history, but passes into a higher region. Concerning this region however it is altogether beyond our scope ..." p. 44. Agent Cooper (talk) 23:04, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge?[edit]

Set up merge. The articles are all but identical. I have also disambiguated Sideroxylon (or if you check it right now, will be disambiguating it as part of a general makeover of the botanical article). As "Wooden iron" seems to be the term used in English, I suggest to merge the articles under that title. Because judging just from them, it appears as if there is no separate category or class of oxymorons (in the strict sense: contradictions between an adjective and its noun) that are called sideroxylons; rather the term "sideroxylon" is a somewhat popular oxymoron. -- Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]