MEANING. Speaking broadly any thing or action which sug gests another without actually being a picture or copy of it may be said to have meaning. In so far as it has meaning it is called a mark or a sign or a symbol. A portrait depicts a person, a picture depicts a landscape, but neither "means" its original in the way in which their names or descriptions (or other symbols) do. Any thing might be made the symbol of another either by purely arbi trary association or by some more natural association based on objective connections. In one or other of these ways the Union Jack has become the symbol of the British empire, Stars and Stripes, of the United States ; the giving of a ring is the symbol of engagement or of marriage; the lily is the symbol of purity; rosemary of sweet remembrance; and so on. Some things are actually called after what they symbolize or mean rather than after what they are in themselves—"forget-me-nots," for example. Other things are called by names which are descriptive partly of what they are, and partly of what they symbolize—e.g., "marriage ring," "loving cup." In so far as the labours of science and of art reach beyond observation and description they are mainly con cerned with discovering the meanings of things. But the meanings sought by the man of science may not be those which the poet looks for. And there may have been some scientific virtue and restraint in the man of whom Wordsworth hummed rather plain tively : The primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.
Meaning is the creation of thought. All sorts of things, including all sorts of sounds and forms, might exist even if there were no thinking beings ; but in the absence of thinking beings they could only be what they are, they could not mean anything else, they could not serve as symbols. Symbols are only symbols for thought —the thought which reads in one thing the reference to another.
In fact, concepts and ideas, which are the very stuff of all thought, are just meanings or apprehensions of meaning.
Language, of course, is the most familiar, most useful, and most potent system of symbols. And the problems of meaning have been studied chiefly in connection with language. In logic it is customary to distinguish the different kinds of meaning which terms may have. The most important distinctions are the follow ing : (a) The meaning of a term in extension (or its application) consists of the objects to which it is applicable ; and one may be said to know this more or less if, as frequently happens, one can apply the term correctly even if he cannot define it adequately. (b) The meaning of a term in intension (or its signification) con sists of any quality or characteristic which the term suggests. One may distinguish between the variable intension of a term, in so far as it may suggest different qualities to different people, from standard (or conventionally fixed) intension (or connotation), which is more or less the same for all who use the language cor rectly; and both may be distinguished from complete or compre hensive intension or the totality of qualities, etc., which the term would suggest to one who had a complete knowledge of the things which the term denotes (or means in extension). Sometimes the term "meaning" is used as synonymous with "significance." But "significance" unlike "signification" has reference to value rather than to meaning. Occasionally "meaning" is also used instead of "intention" or "purpose." See J. N. Keynes, Formal Logic (19Io) ; C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning (1927) ; Lady V. Welby, What is Meaning? (A. Wo.)