meta-metalanguagen.
/ˈmɛtəˌmɛtəˌlaŋɡwɪdʒ/, U.S. /ˈmɛdəˈˌmɛdəˌlæŋɡwɪdʒ/ Chiefly Logic.
A language used to describe a metalanguage.
ΚΠ
1945 Mind 54 217 To express what a set of symbols means.., a..second such set or meta~language that speaks about them and about what they speak about is required. ‘“Chien” bedeutet Hund’, for instance, is such a metastatement, where (part of) French serves as the first..language, (part of) German as the second. But what if we do not understand German? Then a third, or meta-metalanguage, say English, is needed.
1957 N. Chomsky Syntactic Struct. vi. 54 Linguistic theory will thus be formulated in a metalanguage to the language in which grammars are written—a metametalanguage to any language for which a grammar is constructed.
1976 Contemp. Sociol. 5 520/2 To separate statements in the object language from those in the meta-language, the meta-meta-language, and so on.
1990 Mind 99 209 One idea would be to repeat for the meta-language the account of negation in terms of joining and separating. But this is pointless since the problem will then recur in the meta-meta-language.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1945- to snap out of
- to snap short
- to snap to
- to snarl up
- to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
- to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory
- to snatch it or one's time
- to snatch out of the fire
- to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat
- to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat
- to sniff the wind
- to snuff pepper
- to soak dry or up
- to soak it to
- to soak one's clay
- to soak one's face
- to soak up rays
- to soap the ways
- to soar with the lark
- to sob one's heart out
- to sob upon a person's neck
- to sock a person one
- to sock it
- to sock it out
- to sock it to