The fact that both terms originally governed an equally wide domain is important for our point that the much-discussed question in linguistics of whether the noun or the verb represents the primordial form of the word is not a genuine question. This pseudo-question first arose in the context of a developed grammar rather than from a vision of the essence of language itself, an essence still free of all grammatical dissection.

Thus, the two terms ὄνομα and ῥῆμα, which at first indicated all speaking, narrowed their meaning and became terms for the two main classes of words. In the dialogue cited (261e ff.), Plato provides the first interpretation and foundation of this distinction. Plato here proceeds from a general characterization of the function of words. Ὄνομα in the wider sense is δήλωμα τῇ φωνῇ περὶ τὴν οὐσίαν: a revelation by means of sound in relation to and in the sphere of the Being of beings.

In the sphere of beings we may distinguish between πρᾶγμα and πρᾶξις. The former are the things we have something to do with, the things with which we are always concerned. The latter is doing and acting in the broadest sense, which also includes ποίησις. Words are of two kinds. They are δήλωμα πράγματος (ὄνομα), a manifestation of things, and δήλωμα πράξεως (ῥῆμα), a manifestation of a doing. Wherever a πλέγμα, a συμπλοκή (a construction that weaves both together), happens, there is the λόγος ἐλάχιστός τε καὶ πρῶτος, the shortest and (at the same time) the first (real) discourse. But Aristotle is the first to give the clearer metaphysical interpretation of the λόγος in the sense of the propositional statement. He distinguishes ὄνομα as σημαντικὸν ἄνευ χρόνου <signifying without reference to time> and ῥῆμα as προσσημαῖνον χρόνον <indicating time> (De Interpretatione, chapters 2–4). This elucidation of the essence of the λόγος became the model and measure for the later development of logic and grammar.