Descriptions Aren’t Prescriptions

One must simplify the world to discover something new about it. The problem comes when, long after the discovery has been made, people continue to simplify.

Language did not function as a storehouse of words, from which users could summon the correct items, preformed. On the contrary, words were fugitive, on the fly, expected to vanish again thereafter. When spoken, they were not available to be compared with, or measured against, other instantiations of themselves.