Using Precise Words
Common words such as play or run frequently have many meanings. For example the WordNet database documents over 57 different distinct meanings for the word "play" but only a single definition for the term dramatic play. Fewer definitions in a chosen word's dictionary entry is preferable. This minimizes misinterpretation related to a reader's context and background. The process of finding a good meaning of a word is called Word sense disambiguation.
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Famous quotes containing the words precise and/or words:
“I know if I wake up cold,
and go out into the clear spring night,
still dark and precise with stars,
I will feel the wind coming down hard
like his hand, in fever, on my forehead.”
—Stanley Plumly (b. 1939)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)