 The Cambridge University philosophers Bertrand Russell (1923) and Frank Ramsey were heavily influenced by American pragmatism (Misak 2016). Their reading of Peirce made semantic indeterminacy grow into an international pre-occupation among analytic philosophers. Although vagueness seems holistic, Peirce’s definition is reductive. ‘Tall’ is vague by virtue of there being cases in which is no fact of the matter. A man who is 1.8 meters in height is neither clearly tall nor clearly non-tall. No amount of conceptual analysis or empirical investigation can settle whether a 1.8 meter man is tall. Borderline cases are inquiry resistant.