A fuzzy concept is a concept of which the boundaries of application can vary considerably according to

context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all. This means the concept is vague in some
way, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without however being unclear or meaningless altogether. It has a
definite meaning, which can be made more precise only through further elaboration and specification -
including a closer definition of the context in which the concept is used. The study of the characteristics
of fuzzy concepts and fuzzy language is called fuzzy semantics.

Another definition, Fuzzy a term used by some linguist to describe a linguistic unit which has no
clearly defined boundary. These units have “Fuzzy Bounders”, eg the English words hill and
mountain.

From a semantic point of view, the question of fuzzy category boundaries and graded
membership is more important than the existence, nature role of prototypes.

Figure 01(Lion)

If we see above picture (01), our spontaneous answer will probably be ‘A lion’, we could have
categorized the entity referred to more specifically as a ‘male lion’, an ‘adult male lion’, a
‘prototypical male lion’ or ‘marching male lion with a big more’ ‘ a marching big lion in side
view’ and so on. It will be argued in picture (01) that for semantic categories, i.e. word and
sentence denotations, the assumptions of graded membership and fuzzy boundaries are generally
unacceptable.
There seem to be two reasons for the wide acceptance of the fuzziness claim. First, the clam
appears to be in accordance with our intuitive impression that category boundaries very often are
in some sense fuzzy, unclear, variable or fluid. The source include:

 Variation of word meanings within a language community.

 Partial knowledge of word meanings (ignorance)
 Sloppy use (pragmatism)
 Inherent flexibility of word meanings (vagueness)

The second reason is, the evidence produced in experiments such as the cup test by Labov. He
presented pictures similar to those in Figure 03 for us. The subjects categorized objects like 3 as
a cup, 10 as vase and 6 as a bowl, but produced inconstant answers for vases or bowls with a
handle-1 and 5- or exemplars with intermediate height: width ratio such as 2,4,7 and 9. The
subjects were also asked to imagine
that the objects are filled with
coffee or standing on a shelf with
cut flowers in them etc.

Figure: 02 (SERIES CUP LIKE Objects (adapted from Labov)

The experiment showed that prototypical cups are about as high as they are wide, have a handle
and are used for drinking’s such as coffee, while prototypical vases are higher than are wide, lack
a handle and are used for putting flower in. the evidence, however, is not as conclusive as it
appears at first sight.

Further, meaning variation also is fuzzy boundaries area. Meaning variation plays a role in our
intuitive notion of fluid category boundaries, because in addition to the knowledge of word
meanings, for example, one might have an argument with others about where blue ends and
green begins. Disagreement is even the rule for all subjective categories such as BEAUTIFUL,
BORING or FUN, which depend on personal attitudes and evaluations.

When we have partial knowledge of word meanings, we ignore another meaning that is
Ignorance. We all use so many words whose meaning we do not really understand. Obviously,
the resulting kind of uncertainly about the exact denotations of words is not at issue in a general
theory of categorization.

Figure: 03

The above picture, we see that it is a picture of German Shepherd that as known as DOG. In the
picture, the dog has five names (fido, bingo, Jessie, prince, puppy). Suppose, Jarry has a pet
German Shepherd and its name Bingo. If Jerry ask his friend Anny, ‘Do you see my Bingo?’,
where Anny do not have any idea what is Bingo and her answer obviously be, what is bingo?, or
she compare other meaning of word.

There are so many words we do not really understand contributes strongly to our subjective
notion that categories are fuzzy, and hence to the plausibility of the general fuzziness claim of
Prototype Theory (PT).
 Figure 4

Further ,many categories have fuzzy boundaries .For many people it is unclear whether a tomato
is a fruit or a vegetable or both.

Finally, by those examples, we see that word or sentence meaning depend on our idea, our
environment and how we get it, while we have to full idea about word and sentence’s. A fuzzy
boundary happens when receiver does not get proper meaning of massage or compare another
object. Basically fuzzy boundary is concept which is lacking proper meaning.