Rule of Defining Key Terms in Serious Disputation

The Rule of Defining Key Terms in Serious Disputation is the narrator’s proposed safeguard against confusion in moral and theological argument: establish the meaning of the main word before reasoning from it, then adhere to that meaning. Its comic application to “nose” makes the rule both a demand for precision and a demonstration of how difficult precision can be when words carry suggestive associations.

The Case for Definition

The narrator argues that writers who neglect definitions invite equivocation. In works of strict morality and close reasoning, he considers that neglect inexcusable: an argument cannot proceed securely if its central term is allowed to change meaning as it goes. He recommends defining the word most often needed at the outset and, as he puts it, changing it into “small coin”—breaking a broad or ambiguous term into a clear, usable sense. Once that work is done, he contends, confusion should have no easy opening through which to alter either the writer’s or the reader’s understanding.

The rule is also presented as a response to the narrator’s own vulnerability. He says that readers have taken advantage of openings left by equivocal language and of his reliance on the cleanliness of their imaginations. Definition is therefore not merely a formal courtesy: it is an attempt to constrain interpretation before a word can generate unintended meanings.

Applying the Rule to “Nose”

The immediate subject is the word “nose,” introduced in a family anecdote in which the narrator’s great-grandmother explains that her great-grandfather has little or no nose. Before continuing with the subject, the narrator pauses to define his use of the term. He insists that throughout the chapter on noses, and wherever else the word occurs in the work, he means a nose and nothing more or less.

That apparently simple definition follows a warning about the word “Crevice,” which Eugenius points out can be read in two senses. The narrator answers by distinguishing a “dirty” road from a “clean” one, and Eugenius chooses the clean. Yet the narrator’s triumph over his friend is immediately undercut by his admission that he triumphs “like a fool.” The episode turns definition into a comic performance: even a declared choice between meanings depends on the audience’s judgment about what the words imply.

Precision and Its Limits

The narrator asks readers of every age, complexion, and condition to resist the devil’s attempts to put other ideas into their minds. The extravagance of this appeal complicates the rule it is meant to enforce. A definition can state the intended meaning, but it cannot simply erase associations that a word has already acquired in context. The chapter’s repeated attention to noses makes that tension especially visible: the narrator demands a literal reading while drawing attention to the interpretive unease surrounding the term.

The rule thus stands between an ideal of disciplined reasoning and the instability of actual reading. Its demand is clear—define the principal term and do not shift its sense—but the narrator’s exchanges with Eugenius and his appeal to readers show that language does not remain under a writer’s control merely because its definition has been announced. The comic force comes from that gap: the more insistently the narrator polices ambiguity, the more conspicuous the possibility of multiple meanings becomes.