27 On Description
On Description generally understand the first proposition to mean the second, but strictly speaking they are different. In the first book of the Constructions, Priscian indicates that one word is frequently used for another;! it also frequently happens that one complex expression is used in place of another. Nevertheless, the conditional proposition formed from such a definitum and definition is true.
'If anything is an chimaera, it is composed of goat and cow' is true.
Not only names but other parts of speech such as verbs and conjunctions are capable of being defined by this form of definition. Adverbs like 'where',
'when', and 'how many', for example, can be defined. In such cases the definition cannot be predicated of the definitum when both are taken significatively.
But when the terms are being taken materially, an expression like 'signifies the same as' (which is employed with terms taken materially) can be used to connect them, or some other expression can be predicated of the definitum taken materially. Thus, one can say, " 'Where' is an interrogative adverb of place" or " 'When' is an interrogative adverb of time" and so on.
27: On Description A description is a complex expression composed of accidents and properties.
Thus, Damascene says in his Logic (chapter 14), "'A description is composed of accidents, i.e., properties and accidents. For example, 'Man is a risible thing, who walks erect and has broad nails'. All of the elements of this description are accidents. Because of this it is said that a description conceals or fails to make manifest the substantial existence of the subject; it focuses only on the consequences of that substantial existence."
It is clear then that nothing included in a description is predicated of the description in quid or in the first mode of perseity; it is in this that description differs from definition.
The foregoing passage indicates also that the term 'accident' is used not only for an object actually inhering in something else but also for that which is predicated contingently of something. According to Damascene a description is composed of accidents of some subject. A description, however, is composed
'institu tiones Grammaticae, ed., Krehl (Leipzig, 1820), vol. 2, 89.
' st. John Damascene's Dialectica, an edition of Robert Grosseteste's version, Owen A. Colligan ed. (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1953), chapter 14, 28-33.