However, in many cases, though their words roll trippingly on the tongue, to use a Shakespearean phrase, those words have nothing whatever to do with the real world.

Take the word "inflation," for example. Economists use it, track it, report on it, regulate with it, and urge legislation based on it. Yet no economist can tell you precisely what inflation is.

Webster’s says that inflation is "an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods resulting in a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level."

Given that words are symbols, here are several questions that I challenge any economist to answer, completely and unequivocally:

1 What in the real world is represented by the words "money," "credit," "volume of money," volume of credit," "goods," and "general price level"?

2 What is the operation by which the volume of money and the volume of credit are measured?

3 What is the operation by which the availability of goods is determined?

4 In the context of inflation, what is meant by the word "substantial" and what is the operation by which one determines whether a rise in the general price level is substantial?

Or how about the phrase "family values," something that’s been popping up very frequently lately. Something that may help determine, at least in part, who occupies the Oval Office during the next 4 years.

What it presumably stands for can’t be measured or quantified. It has no shape; no color; no height, width, or depth; no surface texture; no temperature. How, then, can it have anything to do with the real world?

So I guess that the folks who specialize in such words are experts, all right. But only experts in words. But not in what those words are supposed to represent, if anything at all.

So don’t expect them to help you understand what’s happening in the real world any more than you would expect a magician to help you understand what’s happening behind the scenes just by waving his wand.

Think about it.