“Don’t ask what a word might mean”, the philosopher urged,
“ask instead how is it used. A word is a bond indeed

“when speakers share it, to turn it over, pass it back and forth
between them as they compare their disparate realities.

“Meanings, Medusa-headed creatures, have all escaped from Plato’s
ancient menagerie. They wander among us, turning discourse to stone.

“Imagine how all of us are swimming in the mighty river of language
as it flows through all the caverns of innumerable minds.

“Imagine rapids and whirlpools, plunging falls, the rolling monster
that meanders across the fertile plains of sentient existence.

“That speakers live and die is much too small a matter to impede
this mighty distillation of so much human need. “