Nouns and many verbs and adjectives usually receive full definition treatment especially in larger dictionaries. For practical purposes, it is not useful to distinguish between the meaning of a name for an object or idea and a description of the object or idea that a word refers to. A definition of Grimm's Law might logically be 'a phonological law formulated by Jakob Grimm', but such a definition is not particularly helpful. Frames of reference.
Definitions depend on experience.
A definition of snow is more easily grasped by someone who has seen snow, but people familiar with the many types of snow in Arctic regions might find a general definition inadequate. No definition can meaningfully convey the meaning of terms like mauve , puce , beige , or even, for someone whose culture fails to distinguish them, the difference between blue and green . To describe green as the colour of foliage and blue as the colour of a cloudless sky is meaningless to someone whose culture and language do not allow for such distinctions. Defining the obvious. Although it might be an exercise in ingenuity to write a definition of table that anticipates all of these manifestations, its usefulness is questionable, for people can be assumed to know what a table is.