It should be quite clear, then, that there are no criteria to be laid down in general for distinguishing the real from the not real.

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

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?

The theory of truth is a series of truisms.

Next, 'real' is what we may call a trouser-word. It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic--that, to understand 'x,' we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with 'real' (as we briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers.

Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.

Fact is richer than diction.