Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The simple fact was that the gestures of the most famed histrionic school, the Comédie Française, were not significant, far less self-interpreting, and though praised as the perfection of art, have diverged widely from nature.
Whenever, by phonetic corruption or by change of circumstance, it loses its self-interpreting or self-defining power, it must be discarded from the language.
From The Composition of Indian Geographical Names Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages by Trumbull, J. Hammond (James Hammond)
This independent development, thus creating diversity, often renders the first interchange of thought between strangers slow, for the signs must be self-interpreting.
In other parts of this paper it is suggested that conventionality chiefly consists in abbreviation, and that signs are originally self-interpreting, independent of words, and therefore in a certain sense instinctive.
