Dictionaries are given too much credit.
Someone unfamiliar with a word is always told to look it up in the dictionary. How can this substitute for learning what a word is? Words do not mean the same thing for everyone.
Indeed, they mean the same thing to no one.
Words are little more than a subjective map of relationships between this word and a host of others. The map of a word (I must call it a “map” because I lack any more refined linguistic terminology.) for me is certainly not the same as it is for you. This is especially evident with words that do not correlate to concrete objects.
Consider the example of “love”.
“Love” certainly doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. The definition can vary widely (perhaps more than any other word). For some people love is mutual respect, or a warm fuzzy feeling inside, or a rose, or a ring, or an embrace. For some people, love does not mean anything at all, because they have had no encounter with it.
The dictionary tells us “love” is “a strong positive emotion of regard and affection” or “to have a great affection or liking for”.
My intention is not to define a wildly abstract emotion, but rather, I’m trying to show that the mental map of a word is far, far from universal.
No one has had the same set of experiences. No one has the exact same neurological makeup. Our minds do not think in exactly the same ways. The words we associate with “love” are defined by our experience and our minds.
Let us consider another example. “Homogenous” is a word that holds different meanings for different types of people. Ask a chemist what it means. His answer is certainly different from a mathematicians, whose is different from a cook.
The dictionary may give an overarching definition for “homogenous”; it enumerates a few semantic properties that all of our groups may encorporate into their definition. However, the dictionary’s definition is certainly not the mental map that anyone has of the word.
