I love the way that word rolls off
the tongue. Crocodility is an ancient word for fallacious reasoning
See if you can follow this paradox. A crocodile snatches a young boy
from a riverbank. His mother pleads with the crocodile to return
him, to which the crocodile replies that he will only return the boy
safely if the mother can guess correctly whether or not he will
return the boy.
There is no problem if the mother guesses that the crocodile will
return him. If she is right, he is returned; if she is wrong, the
crocodile keeps him. If she answers that the crocodile will not
return him, however, we end up with a paradox: if she is right and
the crocodile never intended to return her child, then the crocodile
has to return him, but in doing so breaks his word and contradicts
the mother’s answer. On the other hand, if she is wrong and the
crocodile actually did intend to return the boy, the crocodile must
then keep him even though he intended not to, thereby also breaking
his word.
The paradox is such an enduring logic problem that in the Middle
Ages the word 'crocodilite' came to be used to refer to any
similarly brain-twisting dilemma where you admit something that is
later used against you.