Great IdeasKnowing and thinking

Words and meaning

How language works, and how words can clear up or cloud our thinking.

The question

How do words get their meaning? Can words make our thinking clearer, or cloud it?

The stops on a time line 8 stops, from 369 BC to 1953. Each number is a stop below, placed at its year.
  1. 1 Plato 369 BC
  2. 2 Aristotle 350 BC
  3. 3 Augustine of Hippo AD 397
  4. 4 William Shakespeare 1595
  5. 5 Thomas Hobbes 1651
  6. 6 John Locke 1689
  7. 7 Antoine Lavoisier 1789
  8. 8 Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953

How the books answer

Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.

  1. c. 369–360 BC

    Plato, Cratylus

    In the Cratylus, two friends argue: are names right by nature, so that a word fits its thing, or only by agreement? Socrates plays with both sides and some funny word origins. He ends by saying we should study things themselves, not just their names.

    Go to the rung: Plato: Theaetetus and Sophist

  2. c. 350–322 BC

    Aristotle, On Interpretation

    Aristotle says spoken words are signs of thoughts, and written words are signs of spoken ones. Words differ between peoples, but the thoughts and things they stand for are the same. He then studies how words join into statements that can be true or false.

    “Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection.”

    Aristotle, Categories 4. Translated by E. M. Edghill (The Works of Aristotle, vol. I, Clarendon Press, 1928). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Aristotle: Logic

  3. AD 396–426

    Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine

    Augustine divides everything we learn into things and signs. Words are the most important signs, and we learn about things through them. He uses this to teach how to read hard passages of the Bible, and how a speaker should teach, delight and persuade.

    “All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learnt by means of signs.”

    Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book I, chapter 2. Translated by J. F. Shaw (A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. II, The Christian Literature Company, Buffalo, 1887). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Augustine: On Christian Doctrine

  4. c. 1595

    William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

    Juliet wishes Romeo had another family name, since a name is not the person. A rose would smell as sweet by any other name. But the play shows that names, and the feuds attached to them, have great power over people's lives.

    “That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”

    William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene 2 (Juliet). (First printed in quarto, 1597). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

  5. 1651

    Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

    Hobbes says that words let us reason, but also let us talk nonsense. Reasoning goes wrong when we use words without clear definitions. Like a bird caught on sticky lime twigs, he says, the more we struggle with bad words the more stuck we get.

    Go to the rung: Hobbes: Leviathan

  6. 1689

    John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

    Locke devotes a whole book to words. Many arguments, he says, come from people using the same word for different ideas, or words for no clear idea at all. Clearing up words is part of clearing up thinking.

    Go to the rung: Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

  7. 1789

    Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry

    Lavoisier and his colleagues gave chemistry a new set of names, like oxygen and hydrogen, built to show what substances are made of. He argued that a science improves when its words match its ideas and its ideas match the facts.

    “Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.”

    Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Preface. Translated by Robert Kerr (William Creech, Edinburgh, 1790). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Lavoisier: Elements of Chemistry

  8. 1953 (published after his death)

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

    Wittgenstein argues that the meaning of a word is mostly its use in the life of a community. Words are like tools in a toolbox, each with many jobs. Many puzzles, he thought, dissolve when we see how a word is used in everyday life.

    Go to the rung: Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations

For young readers

Words are like labels we put on things and ideas. 'Dog' means a furry pet that barks. But words can be tricky: 'bat' could be an animal or something for baseball!

Clear words help us think and talk clearly. When two friends argue, sometimes they are using the same word to mean different things. Try asking, 'What do you mean by that?'

Talk about it

  • Think of a word with two meanings. Can it cause a mix-up?
  • Juliet said a rose would smell as sweet with another name. Do names matter?
  • Lavoisier made up new words for chemistry. Why do scientists need exact words?
  • Have you ever argued with someone and then found you meant different things?
  • Make up a new word for something that doesn't have one.

Where else on the site

Every rung tagged with this idea:

These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.

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