If the word "chair" packed an emotional punch: if for example, people measured their neighbor's worth by the number of chairs owned, considering it a disgrace even to visit a house with an inadequate number of chairs, then there would of course be lots of disputes over the meaning of the word. What exactly is a chair? As a first approximation, we might define a chair as a piece of furniture designed to seat one person. But this counts a stool as a chair, and that might be controversial. In our hypothetical world, elitists who were proud that they had a lot of chairs in their homes might resent the poseurs who boost their numbers by bringing in inexpensive stools. As a more demanding definition: a chair might be defined as a piece of furniture, defined with a single seat, that is also supplied with a back. But does it need to have arms as well? Is it something that looks a lot like the paradigmatic chair portrayed above? There might be semantic pressure in the opp...
