The solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all defects, must be sought in the examples, subjoined to the various senses of each word, and ranged according to the time of their authours. Which option best describes this method?

• A. In the examples accompanying each word's senses, organized by the author’s time.
• B. In systematic rules derived from philosophers.
• C. In a concise set of universal definitions.
• D. In the examples accompanying each word's senses, and arranged according to the time of their authors.

Answer: (D)

The method being tested relies on evidence from actual usage. It says to look at the examples attached to each sense of a word and to organize those examples by the time (date) of the authors who used them. This approach lets you see how a word’s meanings unfold across different periods and authors, showing how senses emerge, shift, or coexist. By collecting concrete instances from various writers and then ordering them chronologically, you can trace the development of each sense and determine which usages were earlier or more influential, helping to resolve ambiguities and defects in semantic understanding.

This matches the described procedure exactly: you use the examples that accompany each sense and arrange them according to the time of their authors, providing a historically grounded picture of meaning. Other approaches, such as appealing to fixed rules from philosophers or aiming for a universal, concise definition, don’t capture this evidence-based, time-ordered view of how words actually travel through usage.