The issue posed by the early linguisticians, that words are not things, was, in its new common-sense attractiveness, a factitio us issue. The material that forms the knowledge of things consists of identifications of subjects of human consciousness. Language is this medium of control, is the apparatus of human intelligence. Lexicographers have charge of acquainting the speakers of a languag e with the greatly varied, ever consistently sustainable exercise of their intelligence of which their language renders them capable. Contrarily to the stress put on change in contemporary linguistics as a primary process in word-meaning, and, as such, a primary characteristic of language, it is the hold of permanence in the midst of change that most marks the general character of meani ng in language, and the general processes of rational coherence by which a language stands in readiness to serve the intelligence.
Language is steeped in the fortitudes of permanence.
To do this, they must penetrate through the shifting to the persisting, and discover the features of rational order, the principles of relations, that make words into language and give a language its powers of end urance amidst the intricacies of vocabularistic amplification and variation attending linguistic growth. There is no categorical difference between defining a word and knowing what it means. Located, the meaning is an immediately recognizable and definitely describable distinction. The ordinary knowing of a word and the lexicographical defining of it employ equally the human ability to apprehend the nature of human experience and comprehend the distinctions manifesting the kind of experience it is. The dictionary is, ideally, the organon of common human knowledge.