Obscurity
Definitions can go wrong by using ambiguous, obscure, or figurative language. If 'beauty' is defined as 'aesthetically successful', one must continue to break down and define the following definition. This can often lead to circular definitions. Definitions should be defined in the most prosaic form of language to be understood. Failure to elucidate provides fallacious definitions.
An often quoted example is Samuel Johnson's definition for oats: "Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland, supports the people", to which his Scots friend, Lord Elibank, retorted, "Yes, and where else will you see such horses and such men?"
Read more about this topic: Fallacies Of Definition
Famous quotes containing the word obscurity:
“When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards.... Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)