īy the time James Murray and his colleagues were ready to begin work on the New English Dictionary (later to be called the Oxford English Dictionary) in around 1870, it was recognized that in addition to etymology it was important to take into account the history of the usage of the definiendum, a principle that was enshrined in the lexicographic rules that they devised, reflected by Richard Chenevix Trench's epigrammatic observation that ‘every word should be made to tell its own story’.
Which meaning you choose may affect your view of polypharmacy. However, in one word it can mean both: polypharmacy – the use of many drugs (appropriately) or the use of too many drugs (inappropriately). In each case poly- means either many or too many. It is this last ambiguous meaning that is used in English words that start with poly. The prefix poly- comes from the Greek word (polus), which had many different meanings: long (of time), large, wide, or far (of space), much or great (of value or worth), much or mighty (of size), and many or too many (of number). For example, polydactyly means not just many fingers, but too many fingers. However, even with relatively simple terms like this, it is vital to understand the exact meanings of the words in the original language from which the English words or morphemes are derived. Take polymyalgia: it comes from three Greek words meaning pain in many muscles, which is how it is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. This approach is still sometimes sufficient to generate useful definitions. īefore the modern lexicographic era, which started in the second half of the 19th century, definition was regarded as stemming solely from etymology. A fifth method, that of dichotomy, is not usually useful in framing definitions of technical terms, although it may occasionally be useful in checking the soundness of a definition. There are four methods of approaching the problem of definition of technical terms: through etymology, through usage, by examining previous definitions, and by the Ramsey–Lewis method, a method in which a group of terms appearing in a theory can be defined implicitly by the assertions of the theory itself this can be extended to adduce a knowledge of the practices that are relevant to the term being defined. However, the history of lexicography shows that lexicographers have struggled to produce clear, unambiguous and accurate definitions for even the simplest definienda, despite great difficulties, and sometimes with highly controversial results. Many think that it is something that can be done by a few experts sitting around a table for a few minutes at the beginning of a meeting, before the serious work begins.
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The difficulty in defining a word or a term is generally underestimated by those who are not professional lexicographers. It should be positive if possible, not negative one should not, for example, define wisdom as the absence of folly – one should say what it is, not what it is not. There are five desiderata for a definition: In contrast, other types of definition are generally not of value they include extensional definitions, which consist of lists naming every object that is a member of a specific set, and ostensive definitions, which give the meaning by pointing or illustrating. The definitions given here are all of this kind.
Such definitions should also be what is called ‘intensional’ in other words, they should specify the necessary and sufficient conditions that make a thing a member of a specific set. For these we usually need something more – a stipulative definition, one in which one stipulates ‘what shall be used to mean’. Such definitions may suffice in some cases, when all that is needed is to describe what a thing is, but are often inadequate for technical terms. A cat, for example, is ‘a carnivorous quadruped which has long been domesticated, being kept to destroy mice, and as a house pet’. The simplest is the descriptive definition, such as is found in an ordinary dictionary. Thus, a definition is ‘a precise statement of the essential nature of a thing a statement or form of words by which anything is defined’.
To define something (Latin definire) is to determine its boundaries (Latin fines), and hence to state exactly what the thing is or to set forth or explain its essential nature this is what Aristotle called (literally, that which is).
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