Define Your Terms

English can be a very tricky language because any word can have any number of meanings. For example, when I said that English is a tricky language, I did not mean that it likes to play jokes; I mean that it can be complicated and difficult to handle. Of course, the context of the first sentence is enough to understand what I meant. But the principle of it still holds.

Words have different definitions (denotations). Although context usually helps us understand which definition we mean, it is not always guaranteed to work. As an extreme example, there are 38 definitions of the word 'sharp'. Without enough context, it can be very easy to misunderstand what a person is trying to say if they describe something or someone as sharp.

And as if having multiple definitions for each word wasn't enough, we also have to deal with the fact that different people understand a word in different ways (connotations). For example, if somebody starts talking about love, there is a great deal of ambiguity there. There are countless different ideas that people all call love. There is a saying that if you ask one hundred people for their definition of love, you will get one hundred different replies.

When you think about these things, it seems a wonder that we can communicate anything at all to others. And yet, we do. We are far more likely to understand what we are told than not in daily communication. Part of it is because we are using common terms in common contexts most of the time. But the other part is that we define ambiguous terms that we use.

If you are ever writing specifically about a subject, the first thing you should do is introduce your subject and your argument. The second thing you should do is define your terms. That way, everybody will know exactly what you mean right from the start and you will avoid potential arguments that might come from people who assumed you were using other denotations or connotations.