How Wittgenstein Views Meaning in His Meaning as Use

Wittgenstein proposed meaning as use to refute the referential theory of meaning. However, the idea of meaning as use could not explain what meaning is in a direct way. Rather, the focus points to context. In other words, a word can only be correctly comprehended in its concrete linguistic environment. Wittgenstein mentioned that apple, red and five are different kinds of words, but he did not probe into them. Based on his discussion in Philosophical Investigations, the paper attempts to further explore the meaning of substantives, abstract words, color terms and numerals. It is held that the meaning of a word is not its relation to the entity it denotes, but the concept it represents in our mind.