Since a word is a symbol, an arbitrary sign whose meaning is imposed on it, not by nature, not by resemblance, but by convention, it is by its very nature subject to ambiguity; for, obviously, more than one meaning may be imposed on a given symbol. In a living language, the common people from time to t ime under changing conditions impose new meanings on the same word, and therefore words are more subject to ambiguity than are the symbols of mathematics, chemistry, or music, whose meaning is imposed on them by experts.

The ambiguity of a word may arise from:

(1) the various meanings imposed on it in the course of time, constituting the history of the word;

(2) the nature of a symbol, from which arise the three impositions of a word and the two intentions of a term;

(3) the nature of the phantasm for which the word is originally a substitute (see Chapt er Two, Generation of a Concept).