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Old 03-13-2013
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ShizukaMikudou ShizukaMikudou is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ShizukaMikudou View Post

It is not a natural law that the term "dog" means the canine. In fact, definitions of words are changing all the time. For example, calling a Joey a "dog" has an entirely different meaning amongst YGOTAS fans than as if you were calling a horse a marsupial. c:
No, I am not changing a definition, and by "giving it a better definition", I meant temporarily, obviously. Metaphorically, skeptically. Not literally.

Not only do words change all the time, but several words have multiple meanings. If, for example, looking at it in another way, a man giving a speech starts off saying that when he mentions "lions", he is referring to the military and calling it powerful, then in the duration of his speech, "lions" means powerful military, not actual lions.

Bringing that analogy here, the audience is telling him he is wrong because lions don't fight in the war. He is not changing a definition, only giving it a different definition for the situation. It does not change the law that the accepted definition of a lion is "A large feline predator, usually living in Africa, where the males grow manes." But even so, maybe some time afterwards, people begin to actually call the military, "lions". That doesn't mean that the man who gave the speech really was claiming that lions fought in the military, nor that the military turned into lions.
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