Locke's analysis of the origins of meaning is clear, coherent, cogent and devastating to our commonsense beliefs. His analysis establishes that in the last resort the meaning, he would say ‘Signification’, of words is ineluctably private, subjective, personal. Where meanings are concerned we are, Locke judged, irremediably solipsistic. ‘Words’, he notes, ‘in their primary or immediate Signification stand for nothing but Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them.’