  Tidy conceptual schemes tend to become less so when confronted with the facts, and the Modistae spent a great deal of time trying to explain recalcitrant linguistic data. After sketching the origins of the modi significandi in the first chapters of his treatise, Thomas immediately considers a few objections: how can ‘goddess [dea]’ be signified with a feminine noun, which connotes passivity? Answer: a mode of signifying need not always be drawn from the thing signified, for sometimes it “can be taken from the property of the thing of another utterance;” thus, when we say ‘in God’, we do not mean to attribute passivity to God, who suffers not, but only to “imagine him as if being affected by our prayers.” When we use a passive or feminine mode of signifying in relation to God, what we are really doing is signifying our own passive or feminine conception of some other thing that is a genuine recipient, i.e., something that does correspond to a determinate mode of being qua recipient, and then imposing the same word to signify God.  In the same way, we impose names on things we cannot sense via the properties of sensible things, thereby attributing “active modes of signifying to their names” (DMS 2.5; Bursill-Hall: 4).