But dictionary-makers are tasked with defining all the words people use, not just the glamorous ones, and sometimes the simplest words turn out to be the hardest ones to define.

Why would they? It’s not “anthropomorphism” or “jejune” or one of those words people need dictionaries for. Such a list is what you find, in fact, if you look up the in the dictionary, something native speakers almost never do. The only satisfactory answers are found, not in an explanatory definition, but in lists of situations where the is used. Why do we say “I love the ballet,” but not “I love the cable TV”? Why do we say “I have the flu,” but not “I have the headache”? Why do we say “winter is the coldest season,” and not “winter is coldest season”? For speakers of Russian, Korean, or any language that doesn’t have a the, these are important questions. The does not seem like a difficult word, but it’s very hard to explain to someone who isn’t a native speaker. “The pen is mightier than the sword” isn’t about specific pens or swords or even about specific instances of their metaphorical counterparts, acts of writing and acts of aggression.

When you say you know how to play “the piano” or that exercise is good for “the heart,” there is no specific piano or heart you have in mind. Sometimes the doesn’t indicate a specific object, but a whole class of objects. When someone says “I have the apple,” they mean a certain apple, not just “an apple”-any old apple, or “apples” in general.īut, of course, it’s not quite that easy. We can say, roughly, that “the” means the word it is attached to refers to a specific, individual object. That’s fundamental, isn’t it? So this word the, a word that seems to be supporting a significant portion of the entire weight of our language-what does this word mean? It must mean something, right? The Meaning of the Word The It’s everywhere, all the time, so clearly it must be doing something important. It’s the most frequent word in the English language, accounting for around 4 percent of all the words we write or speak.

What does the s word mean