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Wittgenstein's had a poignant and simple conception of words as bags for meaning. We can put meaning into them, and take it out, and put different meanings instead, again and again. They've always been variable in meaning, and its difficult to say any two people, let alone cultures from different eras, will impart the same meaning to a term.

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> its difficult to say any two people, let alone cultures from different eras, will impart the same meaning to a term

This actually sounds like the exact opposite of Wittgenstein, who argued against the idea of a "private language".

You may be right, I'm no expert on his work. Though one thing I do recall is that he had different professional periods, in which he had very different conceptions, or at least approaches, to philosophy; so perhaps that resolves the discrepancy?

> perhaps that resolves the discrepancy?

No.

How about this: what I claimed has absolutely nothing to do with a private language, but with the changing of the shared meaning of words over time.

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