False externals

There are words in language which I've never really been taught a category for, but I feel a need to create a distinction. See there's these words that have concrete meanings, like "caterpillar" or "longing" or "slowly" or "to perambulate" or even "to get angry". And even though the borders of their definitions are somewhat fuzzily delimited, their meanings are clean in that they say they refer to something that can be described and defined independently of the speaker expressing them.

But then there are all these words that are assumed to describe some external reality, when in fact they seem to lack any factual referent out there, but instead simply describe the speaker's own feeling and interpretation towards some stimulus. I'm talking about words like "boring", or "asshole", or "to aggravate". They lack substance, and are not concepts that I can believe in, or share, in the way they are expressed. They refer not to the property of the phenomenon they purport to describe, but point back to the unobserved attitudes of the person labeling the phenomenon.

The example that's most obvious to me is "boring". But it seems that a lot of adjectives ending in "-ing" or "-able" (charming; despicable; delightful; awesome) would fall into that category, where the expression is that "x is y-ing" but really the meaning of this statement is "I am y-ed in response to x". X in itself is not inherently y-ing, attested to by the fact that not everybody gets y-ed in response to x.

Or for instance, how is "I defy you" or "I fear you" or "I blame you" different from "I scare you" or "I abuse you" or "I irritate you"? I see a huge difference in whether it is the subject or the object that is experiencing the action expressed by the verb. In the above examples, "I" am the one feeling the defiance, feeling the fear, assigning the blame, and "you" are the one being scared, suffering for feeling abused, and being irritated, in response to some action by me. There is implied external causality built into the language, a causality that assumes the subject is responsible for the experience of the object. And we tend to believe it, because our language happens to express it that way, and we unconsciously assume that our little inherited arbitrary language accurately represents reality. What is actually going on? Same grammatical construction, but some of the verbs describe what is happening for the subject, and others only pretend to do so.

How about words like "asshole"? The dictionary defines it as "a thoroughly contemptible, detestable person". And to me that just screams lack of reality. We're pretending as if those were really qualities possessed by that person, rather than feelings evoked in speakers in response to something about the way they see that person that they believe is unacceptable! The definition is entirely about the speaker. Has anyone noticed? I would define "asshole" as "a designation used to express one's disgust with, contempt for, and disapproval of a person". I would define "awesome" as "a word expressing one's fascination with, extreme enthusiasm for, and attraction to something". Brings it back to where it's happening. That's how it would be easy to recognize false externals: try to write a dictionary definition and see if the word can't be defined as anything outside of the speaker's subjective experience. Submit more. :)