 Another way in which originalists have split is over the identity of the original object of interpretation. One originalist might focus on the retrieval of original public understandings of key constitutional phrases like ‘freedom of speech’, ‘the principles of fundamental justice’ or ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, while another might wish interpreters to zero in on the original intentions of the relevant constitutional authors. But one must be careful here. Original public understanding is likely to matter to this second originalist because the primary means of conveying one’s intentions in the context of legal enactment are the words one chooses to express one’s intentions. And those words cannot convey one’s intentions unless some standard meaning or common understanding is assumed, a standard public meaning to which both authors and readers have access and in terms of which the latter can, and are expected to, grasp the former’s intentions. But that meaning or understanding cannot be anything other than the original one because authors do not have crystal balls and therefore have no access to future understandings. So an original intention theorist will inevitably have interpreters pay considerable attention to original public understandings – perhaps to the point that her theory actually collapses into a form of public understanding originalism. Similar things will be true of an originalist whose principal focus is original public understanding: she need not dismiss entirely the relevance of original intentions, at least in some cases. Should it turn out, for instance, that original public understanding leads to unforeseen applications or results that we have good historical evidence to believe the authors did not intend, or would have flatly rejected had they known what we now know, an originalist might allow such actual or hypothetical intentions to override original public understandings.