ABSTRACT
It is a very common error to think that if a word is meaningful then it should have a fixed and wholly determinate meaning and, further, that its meaning should be in just one mode-that the word should have only one use, for example a descriptive function. An example of this view would be that all meaningful words in fact stand as names designating objects, however loosely ‘object’ may be construed. On such a basis the word ‘community’ would stand as a name denoting some determinate object, namely a particular type of social life and experience. To elucidate the meaning of community would be equivalent to determining that feature of a nexus of social practices to which the word ‘community’ refers, and it would then follow that this feature of social life, once determined, would then act, as it were, as the ‘object’, in the loose sense indicated, to which the word ‘community’ refers. It would also follow that if the word was to be used meaningfully then this feature, this ‘object’, would have to be present on all occasions of its use. All communities, on such a view, must then share a common factor and the presence of this factor secures the meaning of ‘community’ when it is ascribed to a particular form of social life.
