Family resemblances

At the moment many countries are again in lockdown because of the second wave of Covid-19. I told a friend of mine in another country what the present lockdown in the Netherlands involves: Non-essential shops are closed. Schools are closed. Groups outside are not allowed to be bigger than two persons. You are allowed to receive only two persons a day at home. Libraries, concert halls etc. are closed. People have to work at home again, as much as possible. Etc. Etc. However, people can leave their homes when they like, so they are not locked up in their houses. In my friend’s country, however, people must stay at home and will be allowed to leave only for work, health issues, or buying daily necessities like food. There are yet a few other exceptions that you are allowed to leave your home but if you don’t have a legally accepted reason, you can be fined. Therefore, we can say that in my friend’s country people are locked up in their houses, unless they have a legal reason to go out. The difference with the Netherlands made my friend remark: “I understand that the term ‘lockdown’ has different meanings and is applied with different guidelines in the countries adopting it.” Apparently, the word “lockdown” doesn’t have the same meaning for everybody. In one country it means this, in another country that, although in a way the idea of lockdown is the same everywhere in the world. What a lockdown involves can even differ from person to person. To quote a blog by Chris Bloor: “Some friends have considered themselves ‘in lockdown’ while permitting themselves visits to relatives’ homes, family gatherings, a long trip to a distant beauty spot. Others I know have enforced a virtual total exclusion from the world.” (source) How can one word have such different meanings?
In order to answer this question, I think we can best go to Wittgenstein. Somewhere in the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations he explains the idea of language-game. In this blog it’s not important what he means by it, but then, in § 65, he says: “[S]omeone might object against me: ‘You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game … is: what is common to all these activities …’ ” Wittgenstein’s admits that this is true and then he begins to explain (66): “Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? … [I]f you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. … Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ballgames, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.—Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”
And then Wittgenstein continues (67): “I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.— And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.”
Now back to my question: How is it possible that the word “lockdown” has so many different meanings? As we have just seen: How different games may be from each other, we see enough similarities in them to call them all “games”. Games have “family resemblances” in Wittgenstein’s words. It’s the same so for all kinds of lockdown: How different they are, apparently we see enough similarities in them to call them all “lockdown”. All these kinds of lockdown have “family resemblances”. What they all have in common is even clearer than in the case of games: We talk of a lockdown in case of restrictions imposed on society or on large groups in society by the state for a public reason. You can refine this definition, but I guess that this is what all lockdowns have more or less in common. Of course, you can say that it’s weird to use for all different types of lockdown the same word. But this is how we use the word, and as Wittgenstein said: “[T]he meaning of a word is its use in the language.” (43)