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meaning

  ('nĭng) pronunciation
n.
  1. Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance.
  2. Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language: The writer's meaning was obscured by his convoluted prose.
  3. An interpreted goal, intent, or end: “The central meaning of his pontificate is to restore papal authority” (Conor Cruise O'Brien).
  4. Inner significance: “But who can comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?” (O. Henry).
adj.
  1. Full of meaning; expressive.
  2. Disposed or intended in a specified manner. Often used in combination: a well-meaning fellow; ill-meaning intentions.

SYNONYMS  meaning, acceptation, import, sense, significance, signification. These nouns refer to the idea conveyed by something, such as a word, action, gesture, or situation: Synonyms are words with the same or nearly the same meaning. In one of its acceptations value is a technical term in music. The import of his statement is ambiguous. The term anthropometry has only one sense. The significance of a green traffic light is widely understood. Linguists have determined the hieroglyphics' signification.


 
 
Thesaurus: meaning

noun

  1. That which is signified by a word or expression: acceptation, connotation, denotation, import, intent, message, purport, sense, significance, significancy, signification, value. See meaning.
  2. The thread or current of thought uniting or occurring in all the elements of a text or discourse: aim, burden2, drift, intent, purport, substance, tendency, tenor, thrust. See meaning.
  3. What one intends to do or achieve: aim, ambition, design, end, goal, intent, intention, mark, object, objective, point, purpose, target, view, why. Idioms: end in view, why and wherefore. See planned/unplanned, purpose/purposelessness.
  4. The gist of a specific action or situation: idea, import, point, purport, significance, significancy. See meaning.

adjective

    Effectively conveying meaning, feeling, or mood: eloquent, expressive, meaningful, significant. See express, show/hide.

 

In philosophy and linguistics, the sense of a linguistic expression, sometimes understood in contrast to its referent. For example, the expressions "the morning star" and "the evening star" have different meanings, though their referent (Venus) is the same. Some expressions have meanings but no referents ("the present king of France") or referents but no meanings ("that"). The literal or conventional meaning of an expression may differ from what a speaker of that expression means by uttering it on a particular occasion; this is the case with similes, statements uttered ironically, and statements that convey various "conversational implicatures," as in the following examples: "She entered the house and shot him" implicates that she shot him in the house after she entered it, though this is not part of the sentence's literal meaning; "John has three sons" implicates that John has no more than three sons, though again the sentence does not literally say this. Other non-literal aspects of meaning include the potential for carrying out various "speech acts" (see speech act theory); e.g., uttered in the appropriate circumstances, the sentence "I christen thee the Joseph Stalin," constitutes the act of naming a ship, and the sentence "I am cold" constitutes a request to close the window. See also pragmatics; semantics.

For more information on meaning, visit Britannica.com.

 

Whatever it is that makes what would otherwise be mere sounds and inscriptions into instruments of communication and understanding. The philosophical problem is to demystify this power, and to relate it to what we know of ourselves and the world. Contributions to this study include the theory of speech acts, and the investigation of communication and the relationship between words and ideas, and words and the world. For particular problems see content, ideas, indeterminacy of translation, inscrutability of reference, language, predication, reference, rule-following, semantics, translation, and the topics referred to under headings associated with logic. The loss of confidence in determinate meaning (‘every decoding is another encoding’) is an element common both to postmodernist uncertainties in the theory of criticism, and to the analytic tradition that follows writers such as Quine.

 
Word Tutor: meaning
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: What is supposed to be understood.

pronunciation Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. — Ashleigh Brilliant

 
Quotes About: Meaning

Quotes:

"For a large class of cases -- though not for all -- in which we employ the word meaning it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation." - George Eliot

 
Wikipedia: meaning

Meaning can be:

Theoretic

  • Meaning (non-linguistic), extra-linguistic meaning (intentional communication without the use of language), and natural meaning, where no intentions are involved at all.

Proper name

See also


 
Translations: Meaning

Dansk (Danish)
n. - betydning, betydningsindhold, mening
adj. - udtryksfuld, sigende, betydningsfuld

Nederlands (Dutch)
betekenis, bedoeling, veelbetekenend

Français (French)
n. - sens, signification, (Jur) termes (de la loi)
adj. - significatif

Deutsch (German)
n. - Bedeutung, Sinn
adj. - bedeutungsvoll

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - έννοια, νόημα, σημασία, σκοπός, λόγος
adj. - εκφραστικός, μεστός νοήματος

Italiano (Italian)
senso, significativo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - sentido (m), intenção (f)
adj. - intencional, significativo

Русский (Russian)
значение, многозначительный, существенный, имеющий намерение

Español (Spanish)
n. - intención, propósito, significado, acepción
adj. - significativo, lleno de intención

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - mening, innebörd, avsikt
adj. - menande

中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
意思, 意义, 重要性, 含义, 意味深长的

中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 意思, 意義, 重要性, 含義
adj. - 意味深長的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 뜻, 중요함
adj. - 의미가 있는, ~할 의도가 있는, 선의의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 意味, 考え, 目的, 効力, 重要性
adj. - 意味深長な, 意味ありげな, …する考えの

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) معنى, مدلول, مغزى, قصد‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮משמעות, כוונה, מובן‬
adj. - ‮רב-הבעה, רב-משמעות‬


 
Best of the Web: meaning

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American Sign Language
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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial Read more
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Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Meaning" Read more
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