(All right, transport yourself into full-blown Lojbanistan of the future for a moment, full of native Lojban speakers -- a lot of this is hypothetical. Also, <generic disclaimer on my inexperience or mistakes>)
I've been thinking about how people define words.
When one person asks "What does beautiful mean?" the first thing the responder starting scrambling for is not the definition, but instead, synonyms. "Oh, you know, pretty... good-looking." Then he moves on to trying to put his finger on the real definition. "Pleasing to look at..." etc.
But when one Lojbanist asks for a meaning of {melbi}, (the proper way to ask this is another question of mine entirely, discussed below) he knows there probably not any good immediate synonym to begin with, and will go directly to definitions like {pluka se catlu}, examples like {ko'a melbi mi}, or more complicated descriptions.
Another example I thought of is "equal" vs. {du}.
English speakers might start with "They're the same, equivalent... on the same level... <grabs dictionary>"
Lojban speakers would go straight to logical examples like {roda .i da du da}
I feel like this is another example of how Lojban might let the human mind get used to cutting out the crappy relationships it's used to having to make with natlangs. For one, Lojban doesn't allow for us to rely on synonyms to define things. For another, culturally, Lojban doesn't require us to have synonyms on hand to interchange words and keep conversation "interesting"... one of the other things I've suddenly started questioning about natlangs. (Why is it wrong to "overuse" a word when that describes what is going on? Why is it that there are at least two other words that I can easily use instead for the same meaning?)
(Total tangent: I've thus also been thinking about how very different it will be speaking/writing in Lojbanistan, where there is not cultural crime in using the same word often. For one thing, it must be easier to glance at a page and catch the main topics. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the entirety of what might be able to be in a Lojban "thesaurus" contained in the "cf." redirects in the gismu dictionary?)
About the question-asking...
Now that I think about it, the type of response given probably depends on the question.
One way might be {ki'a broda}, with the issue of "Are you confused about the meaning or my use of broda?"
Another might be {broda .ije'i mo}, for "Give me some examples and tell me their relation to broda."
Or maybe something as simple as {broda je'i mo}, if I understand how je'i works well enough.
Maybe a combination of these?
.i cusku da'u ta'i ma
mi'e djandus
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