Definitions and Their Purposes

Every philosopher may differ in their views regarded the purpose of definitions, but Plato a well known philosopher born in 428 BC, believed that definitions were to interpret the meanings of non concrete forms such as justice. A definition can be defined as a group of words that give meaning to another word, and because of this each definition has two parts the Definiendum, which is the word that is going to be defiend, and the definiens the words which define it. An example is in the definition of "'Wolf', any of several large canivorous mamals of the genus Canis, of the dog family Canidae, esp C.Lupus, usually hunting in packs, formerly common throughout the Northern Hemisphere." So in this example the word "Wolf" is the definiendum and the words that followed describing wolf are its deiniens.