The assumption that there will be terms whose meaning is publicly declared and thus sharable is critical to making the Semantic Web work. Although we brought up this issue in the context of machine processible semantics, it is equally important when the semantics are hardwired by the human. For example, consider the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) [Weible & Miller 2000] a set of 15 terms for describing resources. The elements include such things as title, subject and date and are designed to facilitate search across different subject areas. The meaning for these elements is defined in English, not a formal language. Nevertheless, if this meaning is hardwired into a Web application, that application can make use of Web content that is marked up and points to the Dublin Core elements.