Abstract

“What is a word?”1 The question was not asked in the expectation of a definitive answer, for words of their nature—as he saw—cannot readily provide one. It is of course a truism that all definitions are made of words, but Leavis was apt to point out that the meanings of many important words resist full lexical definition. Their being thus resistant is often a mark of their importance.2 By a very different route, Wittgenstein arrived at an “answer” akin to that which Leavis himself tacitly proposed: “Die Bedeutung des Wortes is das, was die Erklärung der Bedeutung erklärt.”4The meaning of a word is what the...