J. L. Austin quote: “Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?”

“He regards it, with many moderns, as a state of things, not a thing; a convenient word denoting the sense of personality, of individual identity.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Note I : Hâjî Abdû, The Man
Context: With Hâjî Abdû the soul is not material, for that would be a contradiction of terms. He regards it, with many moderns, as a state of things, not a thing; a convenient word denoting the sense of personality, of individual identity.

“It is useful to have a short expression for denoting the whole of the probabilities attached to the different attributes in a collective. We shall use for this purpose the word distribution.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

Second Lecture, The Elements of the Theory of Probability, p. 35 (See also: probability space)
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

“There was no need that there should everywhere exist many bodies, and many spirits like Jesus, in order that the whole world of men might be enlightened by the Word of God.”

Origen book Contra Celsum

Against Celsus, Bk. 6, ch. 79; vol. 2, p. 422.
Against Celsus
Context: There was no need that there should everywhere exist many bodies, and many spirits like Jesus, in order that the whole world of men might be enlightened by the Word of God. For the one Word was enough, having arisen as the "Sun of righteousness (Malachi chpt. 3)," to send forth from Judea His coming rays into the soul of all who were willing to receive Him. But if any one desires to see many bodies filled with a divine Spirit, similar to the one Christ, ministering to the salvation of men everywhere, let him take note of those who teach the gospel of Jesus in all lands in soundness of doctrine and uprightness of life, and who are themselves termed "christs" by the Holy Scriptures, in the passage, "Touch not mine anointed, and do not my prophets any harm." For as we have heard that Antichrist cometh, and yet have learned that there are many antichrists in the world, in the same way, knowing that Christ has come, we see that, owing to Him, there are many christs in the world, who, like Him, have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore God, the God of Christ, anointed them also with the "oil of gladness." But inasmuch as He loved righteousness and hated iniquity above those who were His partners, He also obtained the first-fruits of His anointing, and, if we must so term it, the entire unction of the oil of gladness; while they who were His partners shared also in His unction, in proportion to their individual capacity.

“The 'physical' does not mean any particular kind of reality, but a particular kind of denoting reality, namely a system of concepts in the natural sciences which is necessary for the cognition of reality. 'The physical' should not be interpreted wrongly as an attribute of one part of reality, but not of the other; it is rather a word denoting a kind of conceptual construction, as, e. g., the markers 'geographical' or 'mathematical', which denote not any distinct properties of real things, but always merely a manner of presenting them by means of ideas.”

Moritz Schlick book Théorie générale de la connaissance

Source: Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 1925, p. 27 i. ; as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 83

“I think those elections should be about many, many things, they should be about freedom, they should be about jobs, they should be about growth, but they should be about repealing every bloody word of Obamacare.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Cruz speech at National Conservative Student Conference hosted by YAF, Cruz: 2014 & 2016 "Should Be About Repealing Every Bloody Word of Obamacare" http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/07/29/cruz_2014__2016_should_be_about_repealing_every_bloody_word_of_obamacare.html, Real Clear Politics (July 29, 2014)
2010s
Context: If we're going to repeal Obamacare, and I'm convinced we're going to, it's going to come from y'all. It's going to come from the people saying this thing isn't working, let's start over. And I intend -- let me just say, that '14 and '16, I think those elections should be about many, many things, they should be about freedom, they should be about jobs, they should be about growth, but they should be about repealing every bloody word of Obamacare.

“This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

“What in the whole denotes a causal equilibrium process, appears for the part as a teleological event.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Bertalanffy (1929, p. 306) cited in: Cliff Hooker ed. (2011) Philosophy of Complex Systems. p. 190
1920s

“Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

“A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

On The Algebra of Logic (1885)
Context: Any character or proposition either concerns one subject, two subjects, or a plurality of subjects. For example, one particle has mass, two particles attract one another, a particle revolves about the line joining two others. A fact concerning two subjects is a dual character or relation; but a relation which is a mere combination of two independent facts concerning the two subjects may be called degenerate, just as two lines are called a degenerate conic. In like manner a plural character or conjoint relation is to be called degenerate if it is a mere compound of dual characters.
A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind. If this triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depends upon a habit. Such signs are always abstract and general, because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgment. For the sake of brevity I will call them tokens.

“The whole business of swearing, especially English swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is as irrational as magic-- indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound, which we do by mentioning something that should be kept secret--usually something to do with the sexual functions. But the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it into a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 32

“Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?”

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