Now [W|w]hat do the words of this language denote? – How can this show itself – [w|W]hat they denote – except ˇhow is this to appear, unless in the way they are used? And this is what we have described. The expression, “this word denotes that ˇso & so” would have then to be ˇnow become a part of this description. Or: the description

is to
should

be put in the form: “The word … denotes …”.
Now one can it certainly ˇis possible to condense shorten the description of the use of the word “slab”

into saying
in this way, and say

that this word denotes this object. Th[at|is] is what one would do, for instance, if the question was were simply ˇ, for instance, to prevent the misunderstanding of thinking that the word “slab” referred to the kind of

block which
building stone that

we actually call ˇa “cube”,

and
while

the ˇparticular sort of “reference”

however
this is

, i.e.

all the rest of the game with
everything else about the use of

these words,

were
is

familiar.
Similarly one might say that the signs “a”, “b”, “c”, etc. denote numbers, when if this ˇis to removes the misunderstanding of thinking that “a”, “b”[b|,] “c”, play the role in

our
the

language which actually is

is played by “cube”, “column”, “slab”. And one can say also that “c” denotes this number and not that, – when this is to explain, say, that the letters are to be used in the order “a”, “b”, “c”, “d” etc., and not “a”, “b”, “d”, “c”.
But because you by assimilat[e|ing] in this way the descriptionˇs of the uses of these words to one another, their uses doesn't

become
grow

more similar[:| .] For, as we have seen, their uses is are of widely different sorts.

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.