The Definition of Words

Another means of buttressing your command of your present vocabulary is to define words you use or are familiar with.

Do not bewilder yourself with words (like and, the) which call for ingenuity in handling somewhat technical terms, or with words (like thing, affair, condition) which loosely cover a multitude of meanings. (You may, however, concentrate your efforts upon some one meaning of words in the latter group.) Select words with a fairly definite signification, and express this as precisely as you can.  You may afterwards consult a dictionary for means of checking up on what you have done.  But in consulting it think only of idea, not of form.  You are not training yourself in dictionary definitions, but in the sharpness and clarity of your understanding of meanings.

About the only rule to be laid down regarding the definition of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs is that you must not define a word in terms of itself.  Thus if you define grudgingly as “in a grudging manner,” you do not dissipate your hearer’s uncertainty as to what the word means.  If you define it as “unwillingly” or “in a manner that shows reluctance to yield possession,” you give your hearer a clear-cut idea in no wise dependent upon his ability to understand the word that puzzled him in the first place.

Normally, in defining a noun you should assign the thing named to a general class, and to its special limits within that class; in other words, you should designate its genus and species.  You must take care to differentiate the species from all others comprised within the genus.  You will, in most instances, first indicate the genus and then the species, but at your convenience you may indicate the species first.  Thus if you affirm, “A cigar is smoking-tobacco in the form of a roll of tobacco-leaves,” you name the genus first and later the characteristics of the species.  You have given a satisfactory definition.  If on the other hand you affirm, “A cigar is a roll of tobacco-leaves meant for smoking,” you first designate the species and then merely imply the genus.  Again you have given a satisfactory definition; for you have permitted no doubt that the genus is smoking-tobacco, and have prescribed such limits for the species as exclude tobacco intended for a pipe or a cigarette.

In defining nouns by the genus-and-species method, restrict the genus to the narrowest possible bounds.  You will thus save the need for exclusions later.  Had you in your first definition of a cigar begun by saying that it is tobacco, rather than smoking-tobacco, you would have violated this principle; and you would have had to amplify the rest of your definition in order to exclude chewing-tobacco, snuff, and the like.

EXERCISE — Definition

1.  Define words of your own choosing in accordance with the principles laid down in the preceding section of the text.