Stipulative Definitions

To stipulate means to seek or assert agreement on something. In a stipulative definition, the writer declares a certain meaning, generally not one found in the dictionary.

In the excerpt from her autobiography An American Childhood that appears in Chapter 2, Annie Dillard offers a stipulative definition of football as she understood it as a nine-year-old:

Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport. You thought up a new strategy for every play and whispered it to the others. You went out for a pass, fooling everyone. Best, you got to throw yourself mightily at someone’s running legs. Either you brought him down or you hit the ground flat out on your chin, with your arms empty before you. It was all or nothing. If you hesitated in fear, you would miss and get hurt: you would take a hard fall while the kid got away, or you would get kicked in the face while the kid got away. But if you flung yourself wholeheartedly at the back of his knees—if you gathered and joined body and soul and pointed them diving fearlessly—then you likely wouldn’t get hurt, and you’d stop the ball. Your fate, and your team’s score, depended on your concentration and courage. Nothing girls did could compare with it.

— ANNIE DILLARD, An American Childhood

There are recognizable elements of grown-up football in Dillard’s definition. Her focus is less on rules and strategy, however, than on the “concentration and courage” required to make a successful tackle and, of course, on the sheer thrill of doing so.

In the next example, the writer stipulates a definition of the term environmentalism to support an argument:

A sane environmentalism, the only kind of environmentalism that will win universal public support, begins by unashamedly declaring that nature is here to serve man. A sane environmentalism is entirely anthropocentric: it enjoins man to preserve nature, but on the grounds of self-preservation.

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A sane environmentalism does not sentimentalize the earth. It does not ask people to sacrifice in the name of other creatures. After all, it is hard enough to ask people to sacrifice in the name of other humans. (Think of the chronic public resistance to foreign aid and welfare.) Ask hardworking voters to sacrifice in the name of the snail darter, and, if they are feeling polite, they will give you a shrug.

— CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, “Saving Nature, but Only for Man”

EXERCISE 16.6

Write several sentences of a stipulative definition for one of the following:

  1. Define in your own way game shows, police dramas, horror movies, or some other form of entertainment. Try for a stipulative definition of what your subject is generally like. In effect, you will be saying to your readers—other students in your class who are familiar with these entertainments—“Let’s define it this way for now.”

  2. Define in your own way some hard-to-define concept, such as “loyalty,” “love,” “bravery,” “shyness,” or “masculinity.”

  3. Think of a new development or phenomenon in contemporary romance, music, television, leisure, fashion, or eating habits, or in your line of work. Invent a name for it, and write a stipulative definition for it.