The multiordinal use of terms requires the ability to distinguish essential relationships and attributes from incidental ones. Until the child reaches adolescence, his tendency to confuse incidental and affective factors with those crucial to word meaning hinders his use of terms at all levels of abstraction. Korzybski's theory of multiordinality implies that one must be able both to analyze and synthesize. While theories of cognitive growth differ as to which of these abilities comes first, the young child appears to have difficulty in coordinating these two processes. As a result, meanings are often over- or underdifferentiated, preventing the use of lexical items in a variety of contexts and levels of abstraction. Children cannot recognize terms as being multiordinal as long as they do not understand that some meanings are context dependent. Three to seven year olds often fail to take this into account when using pronouns, deictics, or relative adjectives. The age at which children learn that multiordinal terms like "problem,""fact," and "reality" are dependent upon context for their meaning is unknown. (Author/AA)