opisowaopisywa

Opisowaopisywa is a coined term in linguistic and semiotic discussions used to describe a recursive descriptive process in which a description is used to describe another description. In this sense, it denotes a meta-descriptive operation that analyzes the properties and structure of descriptions themselves rather than external referents.

The word is a portmanteau combining opis (description) and opisywa from opisuje (to describe) with a stylistic reduplication. Its origin is uncertain and it has appeared mainly in theoretical discussions and online forums as a placeholder concept rather than a formal theory.

It is closely related to recursion, self-reference, and meta-language. The core idea is that a description can carry information about how another description is formed, including its accuracy, style, or scope. The operator can be seen as a description of descriptions across layers.

In linguistics, it can model how dictionary entries define senses and then describe how those senses themselves are used in context. In computational linguistics, it can formalize annotation pipelines where annotations describe other annotations, creating a chain of meta-descriptions. For instance, one could write: “The following note describes that the preceding note is ambiguous” to illustrate the chain.

The term remains niche and controversial; some scholars view it as a useful shorthand for a recursive meta-description, while others prefer established terms such as meta-description, recursive description, or self-reference.