Yes, J Huber is correct when he says that meaning "is used to define something. It is used to say the same thing in a different manner." It is also used to describe. And it connotes as well as denotes.
Alfred North Whitehead in his PROCESS AND REALITY speaks of "prehension" as a way that one individual grasps the meaning of another. He regarded it as a process, and wanted to differentiate it from 'apprehension.'
Currently, in the world of rhetoric and marketing, the notion of "resonance" is popular. When attempting to communicate, does what you say resonate with the audience?
Gordon Allport held that "meanings are caught not taught."
Robert S. Hartman wrote that, for purposes of theory, specifically value theory, a
meaning is rendered (on paper) by a set of property-names. He called them 'attributes.' He held that every concept had such a set. A "definition" is a finite such set. An "exposition" is a wider meaning consisting of more attributes than the mere definition. For details, as to how the meaning of a concept is related to the name of it, and to the actual properties it purports to describe, see the paper by M. C. Katz -
Ethics: A College Course, p.7 -
http://tinyurl.com/24cs9y7 It is a pdf file, safe to open.
To Hartman,
meaning is the measure of value. The more meaningful something is, the more valuable. Thus if one is going to measure the degree of something considered valuable ( or of a rating, or a prizing, or an assessment, a grade) ...then meaning (logically-understood as that set of features, or qualities) can serve as the tool for measurement - since sets can have various cardinalities; and ordinalities. These sets,
these meanings, can - given the right calculus - be computed and counted.
