Definitions are sometimes difficult to understand. You may not realize that, especially if it is your own definition. Here are some steps to explain your really own made definition clearly.

A Man Explaining "Carbon Tax" Source: Wikimedia

1. Figure out the bases first

When you analyze a story or novel, you must know what it is about, what theme is used, and what subtopics are used in each part. These subtopics are just similar with “the bases” that we are talking about now. The difference is that you get those subtopics from hundred pages novel, while you get these bases from only a paragraph of definition.

You can figure out the bases of your definition by using your feeling. I am sure you can see important (and highly related) things from your definition. These important things that construct the whole definition are the bases. For example, if I made a definition of SSD like “SSD or Solid State Drive is a kind of hard drive with increased durability and speed. It is made of some static chips, rather than conventional spinning disk we usually found in ordinary hard drive”, then the bases should be:
- Solid State Drive
- Increased durability and speed
- Static chips

2. Figure out the spices

When you make your own definition, you will use some words that are less important than the bases; they are “the spices”. The spices are usually made to connect one base to another. Spices are somewhat still informative. They are not just connect one base with another. They connect each base with adding additional information, so the definition could become more meaningful. Example of spices are (based on my definition about SSD):
- Hard drive
- Conventional spinning disk
- Ordinary hard drive

3. Sort these bases by their position in your definition

After you found the bases and spices, you must sort these bases within their position. Yeah, this step is not very important, but systematic and organized things seems better. You can re-read your definition and mention these bases one by one to your audience, of course in systematic way. If I use my definition of SSD, the sorted bases should be: Solid State Drive, increased durability and speed, and the last is static chips.

4. Sort the spices too

If you have sorted those bases, you should do the same with spices. Sort them within their position. This will make your definition’s explanation becomes more systematic and organized. In my definition of SSD, the sorted spices should be: hard drive, conventional spinning disk, and ordinary hard drive.

5. Put the spices between each base

After you have sorted the spices, you should insert them between sorted bases you made. Now, you can see that your definition’s explanation look better, more systematic and organized. In my SSD case, it should looks like: Solid State Drive - hard drive - increased durability and speed - conventional spinning disk - static chips - ordinary hard drive.

6. Expand each base (and spice, if needed) to a longer and easy-to-understand sentence

The next step you should do is to expand these bases and spices into longer explanation. Simply, you must explain each of these bases and spices (if the spice is explainable). Make it simple, short, but understandable, and it should explains.

7. Connect these explanations

The last step you should do is to connect these explanations correctly so they will make sense.

Maybe you think that this definition-explanation thing is useless and time-wasting, right? But, if you are presenting something that most people don’t know about it thoroughly (like SSD), then it is worth to make your own definition’s explanation. You could even speak your definition’s explanation directly, without speaking about your exact definition first.

Well, that’s it for now, thanks for reading!