CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Simple question. Vote in the poll if you will.
Discuss...
Discuss...
Does Everything Mean Something?
- Thread starter CavLancer
- Start date
Gori the Grey
The Poster
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2009
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As it turns out, no, it does not. And this surprised me. The Oxford English Dictionary does not actually supply a definition for the word "everything," just discussion of its operation as a word:
A combination of every adj. and pron. 1 and thing n.1 As in anything, something, nothing, the subst. element has usually no definable meaning, the compound being equivalent to a neuter absol. use of the adj. The distributive sense etymologically belonging to the word is often absent, its force being merely collective; hence it is the current substitute for all (absol.), all things, which in most contexts are now somewhat formal.
Note the section I've bolded. At the very least the thing part of the word is explicitly said to have no meaning.
But note also that no definition is given and that the best the dictionary does is give a phrase for which it can serve as a substitute.
Everything, it turns out, doesn't mean anything.
Hope that clears everything up.
.
A combination of every adj. and pron. 1 and thing n.1 As in anything, something, nothing, the subst. element has usually no definable meaning, the compound being equivalent to a neuter absol. use of the adj. The distributive sense etymologically belonging to the word is often absent, its force being merely collective; hence it is the current substitute for all (absol.), all things, which in most contexts are now somewhat formal.
Note the section I've bolded. At the very least the thing part of the word is explicitly said to have no meaning.
But note also that no definition is given and that the best the dictionary does is give a phrase for which it can serve as a substitute.
Everything, it turns out, doesn't mean anything.
Spoiler :
Hope that clears everything up.
.
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
Thorgalaeg
Deity
Narz
keeping it real
Everything that can be thought about can & will mean something to the individual thinking about that thing. But not everything can be thought about or even noticed so I voted no.
Objectively I believe nothing means anything. To matter something must be observed & I don't believe in a God observing everything (and certainly not one who spends eternity labeling & classifying everything like a bored librarian in the sky). Most phenomenon cannot be observed, even with accelerating knowledge & understanding & even in the off chance humans escape our hive & colonize the universe it's unlikely we'll ever observe everything (everything is a lot!).
Objectively I believe nothing means anything. To matter something must be observed & I don't believe in a God observing everything (and certainly not one who spends eternity labeling & classifying everything like a bored librarian in the sky). Most phenomenon cannot be observed, even with accelerating knowledge & understanding & even in the off chance humans escape our hive & colonize the universe it's unlikely we'll ever observe everything (everything is a lot!).
Perfection
The Great Head.
Everything bagels sure are something
Does "all", "total", "entire" etc mean something?
Yes, but not in set manner. It can mean to include all that exists, but that is only evident when that 'all' is a clearly definable subpart of something else. Eg "everything in this room is mine", but not "everything in the world is mine". It also is obviously often used as a rhetoric device, to add to the tone.
In the end those terms appear to owe their existence to a seemingly innate human notion of a totality, which goes hand in hand with a similarily innate human notion of a limit to that totality.
So, everything means something, but something may mean anything
Yes, but not in set manner. It can mean to include all that exists, but that is only evident when that 'all' is a clearly definable subpart of something else. Eg "everything in this room is mine", but not "everything in the world is mine". It also is obviously often used as a rhetoric device, to add to the tone.
In the end those terms appear to owe their existence to a seemingly innate human notion of a totality, which goes hand in hand with a similarily innate human notion of a limit to that totality.
So, everything means something, but something may mean anything
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
"I don't know" Wins!
KMRblue1027
Deity
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
What does it mean for something to mean nothing? It has no purpose? No significance? No value? Something else?
madviking
north american scum
yes, necessarily.
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Exactly...
Indeed. Simple answer: No. Nothing means anything until a meaning is attached to it. (See Phrossack's post.)
