Philosophy
A word doesn't have one true meaning — it has as many as the games we play with it
Late in life, Wittgenstein abandoned his own earlier theory that language works by picturing facts, and argued instead that words get their meaning from use within a 'language-game' — the shouted word 'Water!' can be an order, a warning, or an answer, depending entirely on the activity around it. No single essence is shared by every use of a word like 'game,' he argued, only a criss-crossing 'family resemblance.' The idea reshaped 20th-century philosophy of language.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations — Published posthumously, 1953
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