Synonymy, the other aspect of meaningfulness, involves substitution or interchangeability. Quine claims synonymy is is what occurs when we purport to give meaningfulness to a term. As with significance, synonymy is evidenced by behavior, i.e., how terms are actually used. But the explanatory value of special and irreducible intermediary entities called meanings is surely illusory. He pulls some coins out of his pocket.
Some dimes are brighter than others.
My friend's statement takes the form of a categorical, and I have not seen enough evidence to support such a strong statement. My version provides more concrete conditions for testing and confirming or disconfirming the statement. My friend can bear no more. I am left alone in a desert landscape to ponder the question of ontological commitment. We may say that there is something which my eyes, the sky and my friend's shirt have in common, and thereby posit the existence of an entity.