By 'perfect' I was meaning a definition that the general public knows off the top of their heads. Like the definitions for 'shoe' or 'wood'.Devonavar wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by a "perfect" definition. If you mean unambiguous, you'll have to look long and hard to find many perfect definitions in any natural language... and I'd question why you would expect a perfect definition to exist.
Quite true!The fact is that "noise" is frequently used to refer neutrally to sound, and this meaning is commonly understood. Clear writing should use context to ensure that it's understood when noise is unwanted and when it's not, but there's no obligation to prefer one definition over another, or even to write clearly.
I personally like to keep 'noise' reserved for the subset of sounds that are undesirable.
But generally speaking, you're correct, most people will use noise and sound interchangeably. Does that mean that the two words are the same?
I don't think so.
I'm glad you brought this up. Because basically what we have here is another word that doesn't live up to its theoretical definition .On a related note, you should be aware that, no matter how much we at this site insist that "silent" means "the absence of noise [1b]", a conventional usage of "silent" refers to "very little noise [1b]" as well. For this reason, our resticted usage of the term counts as technical language. We get a bit annoyed when people misuse our technical term, but we can only dictate the conventional usage within our community, not within society at large.
In the context of sounds/noise, silent means the 'absence' of sound/noise.
It doesn't mean the 'partial absence' of sound/noise.
There is really no such thing as absolutely silent or very silent. Just as there is no such thing as absolutely pregnant or very pregnant.