The Importance of Defining Words

When I was a kid, like most kids, I liked to look up dirty words in the dictionary. It was so funny seeing taboo subjects explained in such an earnest way. While I'd look up these dirty definitions, I'd stop to read the definitions of other words too. It was fascinating to me how well a short sentence could describe a word so well. Flash forward many years, and I still read the dictionary. I'll admit, I do look up the occasional vulgar vocab because it's hilarious in a sophomoric sort of way. But I mostly pay attention to the way words are defined. Which brings me to my topic: how important it is to define words.

Defining words may seem like a dumb thing to do, but bare with me here. Have you ever been in an argument where you and the other person are convinced that they are right and the other one is wrong? It is possible to say that you're both right. It could be the case that you're both proving different things. Let's say that you and your friend are debating who is the most famous person ever. You say it's Isaac Newton but your friend says it's Jimmy Fallon. The conversation could go something like this:

Your friend: More people know who Jimmy Fallon is because he's on TV all the time.

You: Newton lived long ago so there have been more people to find out who he is.

Your friend: But most of those people are dead so they don't count.

You: Yes, they do!

Your friend: No, they don't.

You two basically at a stalemate here. The problem is that y'all mean different things by "fame". You're defining it as "the quality of having been known by a lot of other people" while your friend thinks fame means "the quality of being known by a lot of other people". In other words, you don't think that having been known by people who are now dead counts as being famous. Had y'all established this in the beginning by defining your words, there would have likely been no argument in the first place.

In order to prevent irony and hypocrisy, I'd like to define the word "definition":

Definition: n. a specific statement of a word, idiom, expression, etc's meaning.