indeterminacy of reference

Indeterminacy of reference refers to situations where a word or term can point to multiple different things, making its exact meaning unclear. For example, the word "bank" could refer to a financial institution or the side of a river, depending on the context. This phenomenon highlights that language often cannot precisely specify what a term refers to without additional clues. It underscores that some words have ambiguous or multiple possible references, and understanding their intended meaning depends on context and shared knowledge.