The purpose of this paper is to defend Wittgenstein's idea – his so-called “usetheory” of meaning – against what is perhaps the most influential of the many arguments that have been levelled against it. I'm thinking of Kripke's critique of “dispositionalism”, which is a central component of his celebrated essay, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke argues that meaning a certain thing by a word is not a matter of being disposed to use it in a certain way. And his argument has been well-received. Most commentators, whatever they say about Kripke's overall line of thought (leading up to his “sceptical conclusion” about meaning), tend to agree at least that the use-theory has been elegantly demolished. My main objective is to combat this impression.

Just what Wittgenstein himself had in mind is not entirely clear; but that's not my topic. Rather, what I want to do here is to explore and support a certain version of the use-conception of meaning – one which seems to me to have some attractive features (and which I believe can be pinned on Wittgenstein).