Since a word is a way of distinguishing or seeing something, and understanding is also a way of seeing, we are implicitly vulnerable to mistake the capacity to name with the capacity to understand. Too often, learning a word, we believe we understand the often complex and dynamic phenomenon to which it may refer. Generally, these two acts are not and cannot be equivalent. Understanding is not a matter of naming, but intimacy. Naming is not a matter of intimacy, but reference.