The truth and nothing but...

Can definitions of words be clear-cut?

It's all very well to search for hard-and-fast truths but is it possible in a world filled with ambiguity, asks Laurie Taylor in his weekly column for the Magazine.

I had a university tutor in psychology who was popularly known as Doctor Dit. For a couple of terms I assumed along with my fellow students that this was an innocent nickname. But then one day I was told by a postgraduate that it was really an acronym. It was not DIT but DYT and the letters stood for Define Your Terms.

It was a very appropriate designation. Whereas other tutors would positively encourage some debate in their seminars, the man known as DYT would immediately bring any such discussion to a halt by a demand for definitions.

It was not unlike being repeatedly hit over the head. "Right. Taylor, what is the value of optical illusions in the study of perception?"

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"Well," one would begin, "When your eyes are deceived it could be that the deception is the inappropriate application