So these days, when a congressman says a witness should be more forthcoming, he probably means the witness should be responsive. But when a father says his daughter will be forthcoming, he still means she'll be downstairs soon. The authors of a little book called "The Meaning of Liff," Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, say there are "many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist." On the other hand, they say, "The world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places."