What are Words by John Locke 1689
Channel: Age of Enlightenment
Date: 2019-04-10

John Locke wrote four Essays on Human Understanding. This is a reading from his third essay, On Words. He asks if a blind person can be taught to understand what red or white is. Or how to define motion.  Here is the text: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10616

I think it is agreed, that a definition is nothing else but the showing the meaning of one word by several other not synonymous terms. The meaning of words being only the ideas they are made to stand for by him that uses them, the meaning of any term is then showed, or the word is defined, when, by other words, the idea it is made the sign of, and annexed to, in the mind of the speaker, is as it were represented, or set before the view of another; and thus its signification ascertained. This is the only use and end of definitions; and therefore the only measure of what is, or is not a good definition.