For more on the above theme by a better writer than me, see http://lesswrong.com/lw/o9/words_as_mental_paintbrush_handles/
For much more, see http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human’s_Guide_to_Words
However, the LessWrong writers are still missing the grand sweep of the problem. For a more complete understanding, I tentatively recommend this. This LvMI thread also discusses these issues in some detail.