https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/arm
'arm' and 'arm' have different meanings.
"These meanings", the link above notes, "have two different roots: an arm
with a hand on the end comes from the Old English "earm", while the weapon
arm is rooted in the Latin "arma", or "weapons."
Grice found that this does not mean that 'arm' is ambiguous, since we have
TWO lexemes here.
But Owen Barfield disagreed. Unlike Grice, Barfield was a poet, and a poet
can speak of a punning ambiguity of 'arms' as both limbs and weapons, as in
our arms they are, they are our hands,
in city or in town,
may they possess the rights of man
without the despot's frown.
Barfield can claim that it is the punning ambiguity of 'arms' as BOTH limbs
and weapons in 'may they possess the rights of man' that may be taken to
mean different things (cfr. Grice, 'avoid ambiguity'). Here possession can
be either a case of holding on to (arms as limbs) or of forcibly seizing
(arms as weapons) -- cfr. the truth-conditions of '[They are] comrades in
arms'.
The New York's Metropolitan Museum's policy of labelling a department 'arms
and armour' ('armi ed armature', that is) is less disimplicatural,
granted.
Cheers,
Speranza
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