The trouble is that the expression 'material thing' is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for 'sense-datum'; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he 'perceives.

Are cans constitutionally iffy? Whenever, that is, we say that we can do something, or could do something, or could have done something, is there an if in the offing--suppressed, it may be, but due nevertheless to appear when we set out our sentence in full or when we give an explanation of its meaning?

Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.

Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.