How to Do Things with Words by J.L. Austin

Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence.But surely, speaking carefully, we do not sense 'red' and 'blue' any more than 'resemblance' (or 'qualities' any more than 'relations'): we sense something of which we might say, if we wished to talk about it, that 'this is red.'.In one sense 'there are' both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can usually be analysed, but not always, nor always without remainder.Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?.and in any case one can know what things are good without knowing the analysis of 'good'.

The Nicomachean Ethics is only intended as a guide for politicians, and they are only concerned to know what is good, not what goodness means.

Philosophical Papers (1979) edited by James Opie Urmson and Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd edition Philosophical Papers (1979) Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things? However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction.

How to Do Things with Words (1975), edited by Marina Sbisà and, ‎J.

There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in butter but this is the sort of thing (as the proverb indicates) we overlook: there are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

We speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness - the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

Sentences are not as such either true or false.

' A Plea for Excuses' (29 October 1956), address in London, published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1956-7).

These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with 'motive' or 'impulse', but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.

Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.

'Truth', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 24, Issue 1, 9 July 1950.'What is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

How to Do Things with Words by J.L. Austin