English Explanatory Dictionary

grandfather paradox

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past.

Word forms

grandfather paradox grandfather paradoxes

Etymology

From the paradox proposed by the French author René Barjavel in 1944 in his book Le Voyageur Imprudent, translated into English as Future Times Three; in its original form the paradox of one person going back to the past and killing their grandfather before the latter fathered the traveler's father, thus preventing the time traveler from ever being conceived in the first place.

Related words

autoinfanticide
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