One often encounters the notion that telic verbs and verb phrases "refer" to events that "have endpoints", and that atelic ones "refer" to events or states that "don't have endpoints". The notion of "having endpoints" applies to "events in the world" rather than the "expressions" that refer to them. This is the most criticized property of this definition. In fact, "every" event or state "in the world" begins and ends at some point, except, perhaps, for states that can be described as "the existence of the universe." Certainly, John's "being angry" has a beginning, and, unless John is somehow "eternally angry", it also has an endpoint. Thus, it is doubtful that one can define telic expressions by means of properties of the events or states that they "refer" to (a very similar problem arises with the notion that mass nouns refer to "things that can't be counted"). Thus, recent attempts at making the notion explicit focus on the "way" that telic expressions "refer" to, or "present" events or states.