Overly Broad or Narrow Definitions
A definition is no good if it defines its subject with overly wide or narrow parameters. For example, "a shape with four sides of equal length" is not a good definition for 'square'. Why? Not only squares have four sides of equal length; rhombi do as well. This is proven by identifying not only the term being defined, but also the conditions in the definition. Likewise, defining a 'rectangle' as "a shape with four perpendicular sides of equal length" is not valid because it is too narrow.
Read more about this topic: Fallacies Of Definition
Famous quotes containing the words overly, broad, narrow and/or definitions:
“Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The hearts that would have given their blood like water,
Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar.
Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand:
But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.”
—John Galt (1877–1957)
“Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)