This statement emphasizes Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as "fallibilism" and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper conception of truth. Although Peirce occasionally uses words like "concordance" and "correspondence" to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than "nominal" definitions, which he follows long tradition in relegating to a lower status than "real" definitions.