Definition: Real World Writers
Jim Esh
My job is really to pass my knowledge on to people in a way that helps them make decisions. Ultimately it's pet owners who decide what's best for their pet. And so I guess most of my communication, as far as clients goes, is of a definition sort.

Marty Wallace
The first part of chemistry is all definitions. It is just completely definitions. I have heard, and I think it's correct, that students in the first semester of chemistry learn more new words than if they were to take a foreign language.

Rush Limbaugh
Welfare. W-E-L-F-A-R-E. A scheme devised by liberals to persuade as many people as possible to give up on themselves, to invest instead in government for their daily needs. Which thereby transfers power to those who are in charge of passing out the benefits. I think welfare is demeaning, I think it's destructive. I think welfare is the absolute opposite of compassion. I have, as long as we're doing definitions, I think a good companion definition of welfare would be compassion. A lot of people will define compassion by scouring the country and counting the number of people who are receiving some sort of largesse, some sort of aid. I, on the other hand, think that a more productive and accurate definition of compassion would be to scour the country and count the people who no longer need it.

Michael Moore
I want people to consider these words: welfare. You know, say "welfare" to people. What do you think? Single mother, lots of kids, living in the ghetto. Well actually the average welfare recipient lives in the suburbs and is white, and has only two kids. And they're not on welfare usually for more than two years. That's… those are U.S. government statistics. Yet that's not the image that is presented to us from the politicians and from the people in charge. Because they really like to manipulate us with this kind of hatred and fear and bigotry. And I'm really kind of tired of it. And I wish when we say the word 'welfare' we would think about corporate welfare. We spend 50 billion dollars a year to social welfare. ADC, food stamps, etc. We spend 170 billion dollars a year in corporate welfare. Those are free handouts of our tax money, to corporations for things they could otherwise pay for for themselves. Yet, we just dole it right out and we never talk about it when we use the word welfare.

Himilce Novas
… to define, we're talking about different words that define Latinos in this country… When people are defining themselves as a group, or when others are defining them, it's two different things. In the case of Latinos, the word "Hispanic," which is an umbrella term for all different kinds of people of Latin-American origin, was a word invented by the U.S. Census. It was invented so that all these groups could be lumped under one umbrella. And the umbrella was the Spanish language, which is where the word Hispanic comes from. But as it turns out, most Latinos in this country who are of Latin-American extraction, Spanish is a language they have in common, or their ancestry has in common, because two-thirds of Latinos in this country, incidentally, do not speak Spanish, and that's something else that should be debunked… Any word could be broken down like that. As far as Chicanos are concerned, Chicanos are Mexican-Americans. And the word "Chicano" comes from "Mexicano, Mexican." And that was used as a pejorative word, originally. And so many Mexican-Americans objected to being called Chicano and there's still many older Mexican-Americans who object to that term. However, when Ceaser Chaves came around in the 1960's he said, "Let's use that word. And let's take the evil power out of it and make it beautiful. We are Chicanos."