“Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them.”Thomas Hobbes · Leviathan · 1651 · Partea I, capitolul IV
Words are counting tokens, not true coins — their worth lies in what they compute, not what they seem.
Hobbes sees thought as calculation: we reason by adding and subtracting names, and words are the counters of that operation. Like game tokens, their value is administrative, not magical; their use is to keep score, not to replace reality. Danger comes when we mistake tokens for real coins: we speak emptily, manipulate with hollow formulas, or argue about definitions instead of facts. Political debate full of contentless slogans shows exactly what he wants to avoid.
If words are tokens, then a good discussion starts with an audit. Before accepting a term, ask what facts it can be reduced to. When someone calls a policy "inefficient", ask them to show what they are adding and subtracting: costs, time, wasted steps. If they cannot, the token is empty and the talk goes in circles. The same happens at home: "tidiness" means something different to each person, and the quarrel fades once you translate it into checkable facts. The next step is to see what happens when definitions are never settled at all.
Why it matters Read today, the observation is a shield against jargon and slogans: ask what a word actually counts before you use it in an argument.