rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/10/85)
"When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean---neither more nor less." -- Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" Since some people are impressed by this sort of thing, here is a relevant quote on the subject. On the other hand, if we wish to communicate accurately we are under a kind of moral obligation to avoid Humpty Dumpty's practice of giving private meanings to commonly used words. "*May* we ... make our words mean whatever we choose them to mean?" asks Roger W. Holmes in his article "The Philosopher's Alice in Wonderland", *Antioch Review*, Summer 1959. "One thinks of a Soviet delegate using 'democracy' in a UN debate. May we pay our words extra, or is this the stuff that propaganda is made of? Do we have an obligation to past usage? In one sense words are our masters, or communication would be impossible. In another we are the masters; otherwise there could be no poetry." -- excerpted from "The Annotated Alice", introduction and notes by Martin Gardner -- Providing the mininum daily adult requirement of sacrilege... Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr