For the definition of Circular Definition, see Circular Definition.
While this is an obvious joke, it has a certain justification beyond Rule of Funny. This type of definition may illustrate the term and get the meaning across to the reader better than any formal definition in terms of previously defined terms. It is literally impossible to define all terms in terms of previously defined terms.
How does one define the first term? In philosophy, this is known (for proofs — but it's exactly the same for definitions) as Münchhausen's Trilemma — either you use this trope, declare a term to need no definition, or run into an infinite chain.
For tropes and indexes indexed in this index, see...
- Recursion: The main topic.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: You have to do A in order to do B, but you have to do B in order to do A.
- Chicken-and-Egg Paradox: Two or more elements lead to each other in cycle, so how did it start?
- Circular Reasoning: A logical fallacy in which the premise and conclusion are the same; basically, "It's true because it's true."
- Department of Redundancy Department: A repetitive phrase that’s phrased repetitively.
- Mutually Fictional: Two (usually) related works of fiction in our world are established to be works of fiction in each other's universes.
- My Own Grampa: Through time travel, somebody becomes their own ancestor.
- Nonsense Classification
- Recursive Acronym: A word is made into an acronym that uses itself as one of the words the individual letters stand for.
- Recursive Adaptation: An adaptation is given an adaptation of its own in the medium of the source material.
- Recursive Ammo
- Recursive Canon: A work of fiction somehow exists as a work of fiction within its own universe.
- Recursive Creators: Artificial life creating artificial life.
- Recursive Crossdressing: A man dressed as a woman dressed as a man, or vice versa.
- Recursive Fanfiction: Fanfiction of fanfiction.
- Recursive Import
- Recursive Index Index
- Recursive Inspiration
- Recursive Precursors
- Recursive Reality (Of the Turtles All the Way Down kind.)
- Recursive Translation
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A prophecy fulfilled by attempts to prevent it from happening.
- Shaped Like Itself: Something is described as being like itself (e.g., a house shaped like a house, a dog that smells like a dog).
- Stable Time Loop: The cause is the product of the effect, and vice-versa.
- Strange Pond Woman: When authority isn't valid because it's valid, it's instead invalid because it's invalid. (Internal Subtrope of The Presents Were Never from Santa.)
- There Are No Girls on the Internet (There are no girls on the Internet. There are no girls because the females pretend to be male. The females pretend to be male because certain men get outraged if they say they are female. These men get outraged because anyone who claims to be female is a liar. They know that anyone online claiming to be female is a liar... Because there are no girls on the Internet.)
