In further support of the arbitrary nature of the sign, Saussure goes on to argue that if words stood for pre-existing universal concepts they would have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next and this is not so. Languages reflect shared experience in complicated ways and can paint very different pictures of the world from one another. To explain this, Saussure uses the word "bœuf" as an example. In English, he says, we have different words for the animal and the meat product: "Ox" and "beef". In French, "bœuf" is used to refer to both concepts. In Saussure's view, particular words are born out of a particular society's needs, rather than out of a need to label a pre-existing set of concepts.