Meaning is immaterial; it's not tangible. It's not something we can reach out and touch, so it's very much unlike a table, ball, or tree.
Meaning may or may not be immaterial, we just don't know, just as we don't know whether our mind is or isn't material. Just as we don't know whether there is anything material at all.
But meaning is definitely tangible. It is definitely "clearly grasped by the mind" (Collins). It is "clearly intelligible" (Oxford). You should look up dictionaries more often. You'd see how your use of words is far from perfect.
And trees and tables are definitely constructs of the mind. What there is in reality beyond the mental representations we call 'trees' and 'tables' is anybody's guess. Don't pretend you know. It doesn't wash we me.
Like meaning, so too is a definition immaterial, yet there is a distinction between them. Definitions are explanations, and meaning is what's being explained.
Not explanations. Just statements of meaning. We can use definitions to explain what we mean to someone who doesn't understand how we use of a particular word, but that doesn't make definitions 'explanations'.
All these constant disagreements we have about what we mean by certain words may seem subtle and unimportant but that would be a mistake. Our disagreements are indicative that there is no meaning in the world out there. It's all inside our minds.
Words are said to have meaning much like goods are said to have value. Meaning changes like value changes according to how people use words and goods. And different groups of people assign different meaning and values according to their own custom. /metaphor
A word does have meaning. Yes, yes, I hear the old "no meaning in and of itself" bit, but when we grasp for understanding, what we should comprehend is that it's a truth inherent in how we speak. The real deal is that words denote meaning. They stand in place of meaning. We use words as our tools of communication to convey what we mean when we speak. When I say a goose crossed the road, I'm using the word, "goose" to convey what I mean, but I wouldn't if it did not help to convey what I meant. I use that word because it denotes the very meaning as commonly and fluently used by many speakers of the language.
Words are conventions. They cannot be properly said to have meaning. It's a profoundly misleading expression.
Words are somewhat like buses. You take a bus to go from Marble Arch to Paddington. It doesn't mean that the bus you're in couldn't just as effectively be used on an Earl Court - Mayfair route. And people don't necessarily take this bus to go to Paddington either. They can stop before or after Paddington because their own destination is not Paddington at all. Just because we're on the same bus doesn't mean we have the same destination. /metaphor
Each speaker uses words to convey what he or she means. They will certainly believe they are using these words properly, according to usage, but the reality is that they have no way of checking that this is true. At best, they will use words according to the usage of the community of speech they happen to belong.
And then there is no entirely homogenous speech community either. Language is a chaotic reality. You just want to believe in a simplistic representation of the complex world out there.
It is through usage of words that they come to have meaning. The observation (if ya like) that they don't have meaning in and of themselves does not detract from the notion that they most assuredly do have meaning, in the sense the words are used to denote the meaning often collectively expressed by fluent speakers. Announcing that a particular word in another time has a different meaning does not demonstrate that words don't have meaning.
Collective usage is a convenient fiction. It is as much "all in our mind" as meanings are.
It is a social fact that usage is multiple because it is rooted in speech communities that are largely segregated from each other. What a speaker means by words is a consequence of the words he or she uses to express their meanings and this in turn is mostly determined by which speech community they belong to.
It is unrealistic to ignore that usage is inherently multipartite and partitioned. You want to keep up the fiction that there is a 'proper' usage, which would be unique as determined by the self-appointed community 'fluent' speakers, to which you probably think you belong. But no fluent speaker could possibly keep up with the pretence because there are simply too many words and usage is moving too fast. Your own use of words is often defective in this respect, as I have shown you on several occasions. It is also easy to detect non-standard uses by so-called fluent speakers. And there is a generational effect, whereby the old generation of these so-called 'fluent speakers' at some point suddenly begin to sound old-fashioned, fussy and irrelevant, and are replaced by a new generation of would-be fluent speaker.
This is also a politically significant fiction. The reality is that most human beings are fluent speakers relatively to the speech community they belong to. If you don't believe me, I'd like you to visit multicultural areas in Britain or segregated areas in the U.S., and try to explain to the people there that their use of words is not 'fluent'. Bring in a bodyguard with you, though.
Explanations are plentiful, and perhaps sadly, they do not always match what the greater authoritative sources have arrived at.
You definitely like conveniently vague formulations.
Look up any dictionary of the past century and you will see how authoritative they were. They will inevitably appear truly pathetic from our ever privileged ventage point.
EB
