The tethering of words to reality helps allay the worry that language ensnares us in a self-contained web of symbols. In this worry, the meanings of words are ultimately circular, each defined in terms of the others. As one semanticist observed, a typical dictionary plays this game when it tells the user that "to order means to command", that to direct and instruct "are not so strong as command or order", that command means "to direct, with the right to be obeyed", that direct means "to order", that instruct means "to give orders", and so on. This cat's cradle is dreaded by those who crave certainty in words, embraced by adherents of deconstructionism and postmodernism, and exploited by the writer of a dictionary of computer jargon:

endless loop, n. See loop, endless.
loop, endless, n. See endless loop.