Quine

Origin

From Quine, named after the American logician and philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000). Verb etymology 1, verb sense 1 (“to append (a text) to a quotation of itself”) was coined by the American cognitive and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter (born 1945) in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979; see the quotation), referring to Quine’s study of indirect self-reference and in particular Quine’s paradox, the following statement that produces a paradox: “‘Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation’ yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.” Hofstadter also referred to the concept of noun etymology 1, noun sense 1 (“program that produces its own source code as output”) in the book, but termed it a self-rep rather than a quine. Verb etymology 1, verb sense 2 (“to deny the importance or significance of (something obviously real or important)”) was independently coined by the American cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) in September 1969 in the original version of his work The Philosophical Lexicon: see the 1987 quotation.