Abstract
The paper focuses on the relationship between word meaning and utterance meaning and refers to a controversy within ordinary language philosophy. On the one hand, the thesis is put forward that speech-act theory cannot be used to explain the meaning of words; on the other hand, there are a number of philosophers who obviously assume that it is possible to grasp the meaning of a word by referring to the speech act in which it occurs. Using an example by Strawson, The ice over there is very thin, I discuss the problem in the light of an action-oriented theory of language, and attempt to generalize the findings gained from the analysis of Strawson's example.
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