Do words have meaning?

Do we need to know a definition of a word, in order to understand its meaning?

I believe that we do not need to know a definition of a word in order to understand its meaning because as humans, we experience moments that allows us to value words differently.

For example,

A name is just a name however if it a name of a enemy or someone that you do not like, hearing that name makes you anxious therefore you from your experience gave it a meaning. On the other hand, if your love is called by that name, you feel like calm and love.

Do words have meanings or do we give them meanings?

Words have no deeper meaning, unless of course you are a human. In that case words can have profound effects on the way people live their lives. This means that we as humans give meanings to the words. They do not have meaning if we do not give them one. So  the combination of alphabets and letters have no meaning other than the meaning you give it through specific definitions. 

 Words are not sentient, animals are, nature is, these are things with deeper meaning. When one is not conscious living things have meaning words do not.

First and Second order claims from Article about Brain and Memory

First order claims: About the world

1- Discrepancies usually occur because the visual information is incomplete and the brain has to fill in the gaps.

2- Motion after-effects occur after looking at a moving stimulus for several seconds 
our perceptions can be influenced by many factors, even under normal circumstances.

3- How we feel affects what we see.

4- Music affects how we perceive facial expressions. 

5- Our perceptions can be influenced by many factors, even under normal circumstances.

Second order claims: About knowledge

1- Scientific research challenge our  knowledge on psychology  as the research offers how visual working memory can influence our perceptions so that mental images in the mind's eye can alter the way we see things.

2- Two previous studies, published in 2009, question our knowledge on psychology by studying how the contents of visual working memory are represented in a region of the brain devoted to vision, and can be predicted accurately by decoding the activity in that region. 

3- Min Suk Kang and his colleagues at Vanderbilt's Visual Cognition Neuroscience Lab investigation challenges our knowledge on memory as they investigate how information retained in visual working memory can change the appearance of the things we see.

4-Min Suk Kangs investigation questions our knowledge on brain mechanism by suggesting that brain mechanisms are responsible for perception and working memory are closely linked.

5- Scientific research performed several variations of the experiment to rule out other possible explanations involuntary eye movements and visual priming challenges our knowledge on our brain functions as they reached to the conclusion that the contents of working memory can contaminate perceptual processes.