That beery swine?
Seriously, I understand his point that the meanings of "beetle" or "green" or "hurts" are the ones we carry around inside our heads, which cannot be the same as the ones in other people's heads. That's the whole thing about words... they are articles of consensus, developed as we encounter things in the world and compare them to what other people encounter. We both look at a leaf and think "green" even though the exact color might not match or perception of what the perfect "green" is.
Some people look at my eyes and say "gray" and others say "blue." We might say "blue-grey" but that's cheating, because they'll never be able to tell you exactly when blue-gray transitions into blue. Or, if they can (or think they can), their demarcation point will probably not be the same as yours. Similarly, studies have shown that the 1-to-10 scale of pain isn't very useful for patients who are in chronic pain; what most people would rate a certain pain as a 7, one with chronic pain might rate it a 4. They shrug it off. "It ain't so bad," they think. Their set point is already greater than one who commonly lives a painless life. They have lived in the "world of three" so long that they consider it a zero.
Most of the big dictionaries have come around to the "descriptive" nature of their works, rather than the "descriptive." Words mean what most people take them to mean, rather than what the lexicographers want them to mean. In central New York, they have a different gradation of "cold" than people in temperate climates. "Chilly" is when you can see your breath. "Cold" is when your car won't start, and so on.
We may think that words are tools to be used with surgical precision, but they are actually crude tools, the stone hammers of discourse. It's amazing that they can do the work at all. And sometimes they just can't.
Winner: 4th Contest August
Winner: June Flash Fiction
