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One of the most common reasons people fail to communicate is that they use the same terms to mean different things. For instance, “bark” can refer to the voice of a dog or the skin of a tree, and a conversation between people who don’t know they are using the term in two different ways is the stuff of comedy. In logic, we call this error “equivocation,” meaning calling different things by the same name, and not knowing it.

The concept of “sovereignty” is often used equivocally, which causes immense confusion.