There is no more reason why a person who uses a word correctly should be able to tell what it means than there is why a planet which is moving correctly should know Kepler's laws.
(4) When the word is being first learnt, you may associate it with an object, which is what it "means," or a representative of various objects that it "means."
'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
Well, there is another question: By friends and enemies do we
mean those who are so really, or only in seeming?
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
(I don't know what wollen haben werden sollen sein ha"tte
means, but I notice they always put it at the end of a German sentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness, I suppose.)
And what do you
mean? How can a man's inside "front" in any direction?
"I
mean," said the captain, "Partridge the barber, the schoolmaster, what do you call him?
I say what I
mean. I never go out after dark, but I find myself in the ludicrous situation of being followed and observed at a distance, always by one scout, and often by two.'
"And yet," said John, "I am sure the young ladies did not
mean it; it was only ignorance."