In other words, you must make exactly clear the meaning of the
term for the present case.
Your first impulse when you find a term that needs defining may be to go
to a dictionary. A little thought will show you that in most cases you
will get little comfort if you do. The aim of a dictionary is to give
all the meanings which a word has had in reasonable use; what you need
in an argument is to know which one of these meanings it has in the
present case. If you were writing an argument on the effects or the
righteousness of the change wrought in the English constitution by the
recent curtailment of the veto power of the House of Lords, and wished
to use the word "revolution," and to use it where it was important that
your readers should understand precisely what you intended it to convey,
you would not burden them with such a definition as the following, from
an unabridged dictionary: "Revolution: a fundamental change in political
organization, or in a government or constitution; the overthrow or
renunciation of one government and the substitution of another, by the
governed." Such a definition would merely fill up your space, and leave
you no further ahead. A dictionary is studiously general, for it must
cover all possible legitimate meanings of the word; in an argument you
must be studiously specific, to carry your readers with you in the case
under discussion.
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