Locke ECHU BOOK III Chapter II Of the Signification of Words Chapter II Of the Signification of Words 1.
Words are sensible signs, necessary for communication of ideas.
The comfort and advantage of society not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereof those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much ease and variety he found himself able to make. Words, in their immediate signification, are the sensible signs of his ideas who uses them. Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification.