2.3

A stipulative definition is either true or false.

False

From the standpoint of logic, many definitions are concerned not with words but with things.

False

The meaning given to a word by a precising definition is completely arbitrary.

False

Theoretical definitions are either true or false, just as are lexical definitions.

False

A lexical definition reports the way a word is actually used in a language.

True

One of the purposes of a lexical definition is to guard against the ambiguous use of a word.

True

The definiendum is the word or term that is supposed to be defined.

True

The definiens is the word or group of words that assigns a meaning to the word being defined.

True

The purpose of a persuasive definition is to influence attitudes.

True

Theoretical definitions provide a theoretical characterization of the entity or entities denoted by the word being defined.

True

"Diadem" means an ornamental headband worn as a badge of royalty; a crown.

lexical

"Diffident" means lacking confidence in oneself; characterized by modest reserve.

lexical

"Fiduciary" means having to do with a confidence or trust; a person who holds something in trust.

lexical

"Intractable" means not easily governed; obstinate; unruly; not disposed to be taught.

lexical

"Obelisk" means an upright, four-sided pillar that terminates in a pyramid; a dagger.

lexical

"Football" means a sport in which modern-day gladiators brutalize one another while trying to move a ridiculously shaped "ball" from one end of the playing field to the other.

persuasive

"Politician" means a person of unquestioned honesty and integrity whom the people, in their collective wisdom, have duly elected to guide the ship of state and protect it from the reefs and shoals that threaten it on every side.

persuasive

"Psychiatry" means the fortuitous melding of modern medicine with psychology that promises relief to thousands of poor, desperate souls who suffer the pains of emotional disorder.

persuasive

"Smoker" means a rude and disgusting individual who callously emits noxious tobacco fumes into the air, threatening the health and comfort of everyone in the vicinity.

persuasive

"Television" means the electronic medium that keeps an entire nation of viewers in a state of seminarcosis by feeding them a steady stream of inane drivel.

persuasive

"Assault" means, for legal purposes, an intentional and unprivileged act resulting in the apprehension of an immediate harmful or offensive contact.

precising

"Blind" means, for federal income-tax purposes, either the inability to see better than 20/200 in the better eye with glasses or having a field of vision of 20 degrees or less.

precising

"Intoxicated," for purposes of driving a car in many states, means having a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 percent (.0008) or greater.

precising

"Radioactive area" means, for purposes of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, any area accessible to individuals in which there exists radiation at such levels that a major portion of the body could receive in any one hour a dose in excess of 5 millirems or in any five consecutive days a dose in excess of 100 millirems.

precising

"Recession" means, for purposes of the National Bureau of Economic Research, two consecutive quarters of negative growth in real GNP or in aggregate output for the entire economy.

precising

"Bimboy" means a boy who is a total airhead.

stipulative

"Dogbomber" means an inconsiderate person who does not clean up the messes his dog leaves on other people's lawns.

stipulative

"Femikin" means a female manikin.

stipulative

"Petrograb" means invading a country to steal its oil.

stipulative

"Ramster" means an animal produced by crossbreeding a rat with a hamster.

stipulative

"Gene" means the hereditary unit that occupies a fixed chromosomal locus, which through transcription has a specific effect on phenotype and which can mutate to various allelic forms.

theoretical

"Gravity" means a force that results from the universal attraction that every particle of matter has for every other particle, and which varies directly with the mass of the particles and inversely with the square of the distance between them.

theoretical

"Magnetism" means a property of certain substances such as iron, cobalt, and nickel that arises from the spin of the electrons in the unfilled inner shell of the atoms that compose the substance.

theoretical

"Neurosis" means a chronic emotional disturbance that arises from suppressed or forgotten emotional stress (such as resentment, hostility, aggression, or guilt) experienced in early childhood.

theoretical

"Sound" means a compression wave, in air or some other elastic medium, having a frequency ranging (for humans) from 20 to 20,000 vibrations per second.

theoretical