Sassenrath describes REBOL as a balance between the concepts of and symbolism, allowing users to create new relationships between symbols and their meanings. By doing so, he attempts to merge the concepts of code, data, and metadata. Sassenrath considers REBOL experimental because it provides greater control over context than most other programming languages. Words can be used to form different grammars in different contexts (called "dialecting"). Sassenrath claims REBOL is the ultimate endpoint for the evolution of markup language methodologies, such as XML.