Essential guide to writing part 10

(4) DEFINITION, ANALYSIS, AND QUALIFICATION
By its most common definition, the word history now means "the
past of mankind." Compare the German word for
chichte, which is derived from meaning to happen.
Geschichte is that which has happened. This meaning of the word
history is often encountered in such overworked phrases as "all
history teaches" or the "lessons of history." Louis
Professor Gottschalk's is a nominal definition. The essayist
G. K. Chesterton, on the other hand, in defining marriage is
concerned with the institution and not the is, he
is making a real definition:
Marriage is not a mere chain upon love as the anarchists say; nor
is it a mere crown upon love as the sentimentalists say. Marriage is
a fact, an actual human relation like that of motherhood, which has
certain human habits and loyalties, except in a few monstrous cases
where it is turned to a torture by special insanity and sin. A marriage
is neither an ecstasy nor a slavery; it is a commonwealth; it is a
separate working and fighting thing like a nation.
Consensual, Stipulative,
and Legislative
Rather than kinds of definitions, the distinction here is more
a matter of purpose. The purpose of a consensual definition
is simply to tell us how people commonly use a word or what
they understand a thing to be. It is what you find when you
open your dictionary. A stipulative definition is a special
meaning given to a word or entity for a particular purpose.
It differs from the usual (consensual) definition, but is per-
fectly legitimate so long as the writer clearly explains what he
or she means and uses the term consistently in its special
sense. A legislative definition also differs from the conven-
tional sense; it is put forward as what the word ought to mean.

It differs from a stipulative definition in that the writer is not
saying, "For convenience I shall use X to mean such and so."
Instead, the writer is asserting, "I shall use X to mean such
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EXPOSITORY PARAGRAPH
and so, and this is its proper sense and everyone else should
use it in this way too."
Techniques of Defining
are developed in various ways. For convenience
we consider these techniques one at a time. However, they
do not exclude one another, and in practice they are often
combined.
by Genus-Species
This is one of the most common means of definition. The
entity or word being defined (called the is first
set into its genus (class) and then distinguished from other
members of that class:
History is the recital of facts given as true, in contradistinction to
the fable, which is the recital of facts given as false. Voltaire
Voltaire begins by setting "history" (the thing, not the
word) into the genus "recital of facts." Then he differentiates
it from the other member of that class, "fable."
The bulk of a genus-species definition usually goes to dif-
ferentiation. This may be done explicitly, as in Voltaire's case;
that is, you actually mention the other member(s) of the class
and explain how the definiendum differs from them. Or it
may be done implicitly, where you do not actually name the
other member(s) of the class but simply describe the defini-
endum so completely that it is, by implication, differentiated
from them. Obviously class of any size makes complete

explicit differentiation impractical. If you were defining, say,
football, it would take many, many pages to distinguish it
from every other team sport.
However you differentiate the thing you are defining, you
must be clear about which of its attributes are essential and
which are not. For example, the fact that football is played in
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(4) DEFINITION, ANALYSIS, AND QUALIFICATION
stadiums (usually outdoors) before large crowds is not essen-
tial to its definition: baseball and soccer are also team sports
played under similar conditions. On the other hand, the rules
of football, the dimensions and the markings of the
these facts are unique. Such essential attributes are what dis-
tinguish a But this does not mean that you
should ignore incidental attributes altogether. If you were
explaining football to a foreign friend, it would be important
that he or she understand something about where and when
it is played.
The following explanation of what a map is illustrates a
genus-species
A map is a conventional picture of an area of land, sea, or sky.
Perhaps the maps most widely used are the road maps given away
by the oil companies. They show the cultural features such as states,
towns, parks, and roads, especially paved roads. They show also
natural features, such as rivers and lakes, and sometimes moun-
tains. As simple maps, most automobile drivers have on various
occasions used sketches drawn by service station men, or by
friends, to show the best automobile route from one town to
another.
The distinction usually made between "maps" and "charts" is

that a chart is a representation of an area consisting chiefly of water;
a map represents an area that is predominantly land. It is easy to
see how this distinction arose in the days when there was no nav-
igation over land, but a truer distinction is that charts are specially
designed for use in navigation, whether at sea or the air.
Maps have been used since the earliest civilizations, and ex-
plorers find that they are used in rather simple civilizations at the
present time by people who are accustomed to traveling. For ex-
ample, Arctic explorers have obtained considerable help from maps
of the coast lines showing settlements, drawn by Eskimo people.
Occasionally maps show not only the roads, but pictures of other
features. One of the earliest such maps dates from about B.C.
It shows not only roads, but also lakes with fish, and a canal with
crocodiles and a bridge over the canal. This is somewhat similar to
the modern maps of a state which show for each large town some
feature of interest or the chief products of that town. c. C.
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I36 THE EXPOSITORY PARAGRAPH
places "map" in its genus ("a conventional pic-
ture of an area of land, sea, or sky") and illustrates it ("road
maps"). Next he distinguishes "map" from the other member
of its class ("chart"). Finally, in the third paragraph, he gives
us information about maps which, although not essential to
the is interesting and enlightening.
In working out a genus-species definition, then, the essen-
tial questions to ask yourself are these:
To what class does it belong?
What unique qualities distinguish it from other members of that
class?
What other though not important if

readers are fully to understand the word or
by Synonyms
A synonymous definition is simply explaining something in
different words, usually simpler words. Synonyms are useful
when you must use a term readers cannot reasonably be ex-
pected to know:
Huge "pungs" (ox-or horse-drawn sledges), the connecting links
between ocean commerce and New England farms, are drawn up
in Dock Square three deep. ... Samuel Eliot
The questions Mr. Murrow brought up will rise to plague us again
because the answers given are not, as lawyers say, "responsive"—
they are not the permanent right answers, although they will do for
the day. Gilbert Seldes
Synonyms are also helpful if you must use an everyday
word in a special sense (what earlier we called a "stipulative
definition"):
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and
know we cannot live within. use the word "love" here not merely
in the personal sense but a state of being, or a state of
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(4) DEFINITION, ANALYSIS, AND QUALIFICATION
not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the
tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
James Baldwin
There is no sure guide to when you need to define a word.
Certainly a is called for when you use a technical
term in a passage intended for nontechnical readers. Lawyers
do not have to be told the legal sense of responsive, but the
rest of us do. And a definition is needed when you use a
common word in a special or personal sense, as Baldwin does

with love. On the other hand, you waste time and insult read-
ers by defining commonplace words used conventionally.
Defining by Illustration
Examples are valuable when you define, especially in dealing
with abstractions. for instance, is most easily ex-
plained by illustrating heroic (and perhaps nonheroic) actions.
In the following paragraph an anthropologist is explaining to
Americans what "self-respect" means to the Japanese. She
contrasts the Japanese conception of the quality with the
American.
The heart of her definition, however, lies in the examples
of how the Japanese behave to maintain self-respect:
In any language the contexts in which people speak of losing or
gaining self-respect throw a flood of light on their view of life. In
Japan "respecting yourself" is always to show yourself the careful
player. It does not mean, as it does in English usage, consciously
conforming to a worthy standard of truckling to an-
other, not lying, not giving false testimony. In Japan self-respect
is literally "a self that is weighty," and its opposite is "a self
that is light and floating." When a man says "You must respect
yourself," it means, "You must be shrewd in estimating all the fac-
tors involved in the situation and do nothing that will arouse criti-
cism or lessen your chances of success." "Respecting yourself"
often implies exactly the opposite behavior from that which it
means in the United States. An employee says, "I must respect
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THE EXPOSITORY PARAGRAPH
myself (jicho)," and it means, not that he must stand on his rights,
but that he must say nothing to his employers that will get him into
trouble. "You must respect yourself" had this same meaning, too,

in political usage. It meant that a "person of weight" could not
respect himself if he indulged in anything so rash as "dangerous
thoughts." It had no implication, as it would in the United States,
that even if thoughts are dangerous a man's self-respect requires
that he think according to his own lights and his own conscience.
Ruth Benedict
Defining by Metaphor and Simile
Metaphors and similes, which draw a kind of comparison,
sometimes help to clarify the meaning of a word or concept.
In a famous passage, the seventeenth-century Anglican cler-
gyman Jeremy Taylor defined prayer using a series of meta-
phors, which culminated in the image of a lark:
Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the
evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our
cares, and the of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet
mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity and the
sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is,
with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires into
a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the outquarters of an
army, and chooses a frontier-garrison to be wise in. Anger is a per-
fect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is contrary to
that attention which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For
so have seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring up-
wards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb
above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud
sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and
unconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest than it
could recover by the liberation and frequent weighing of his wings:
till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till
the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did

rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel
as he passed sometimes through the air about his ministries here
below.
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