 Consider an example discussed on a number of occasions by Beardsley and already cited above: Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty says, “There’s glory for you!”, and his sentence, he claims, means there’s a nice knockdown argument for you. Alice doesn’t believe him. It means that, Humpty Dumpty explains, because “when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”. Alice doubts that he can make the sentence mean that just by choosing that it mean that. Common sense is certainly on her side. Beardsley’s reply is a little different. He says that because Humpty Dumpty has provided no stipulative definition of “glory”, he knows that Alice can’t be expected to “secure uptake”, that is, understand the novel meaning he attaches to use of the word, and thus can’t intend to perform the speech act of boasting that his argument for the superiority of unbirthdays to birthdays is a conclusive one. Since meaning is constituted by speech act potential, he therefore can’t intend to mean “nice knockdown argument” by “glory” (II: 202–203).