Hard Language

Just a random thought today on language, or since I only know one, perhaps I should limit it to English.  Like many things, we take something simple and make it complicated.  Take the simple four-letter word – “hard.”  Simple? As an adjective, it has, in Webster’s, fourteen definitions, depending on whether you are referring to hard liquor, hard money, hard evidence, hard detergent, hard eyes, hard water, or even hard language.  And that doesn’t even get you to the adjectives.  No wonder it is so hard (as in “difficult”) to say what we mean and mean what we say.