After so long a disquisition on ritual in general, I would like now to look at one particular people's ideas of ritual, the Gnau's. As I wrote the preceding chapter, I thought that I would be hard put to find much clear in my field notes that would help to test or confirm some of the standpoints I had come to. I do not recall sitting down with a Gnau and trying to find out from him his view of the nature of ritual in general; or even if he had one. In talking about an event or procedure, people often said things that implied the way they thought, or they explained some detail and in doing so made clear some of their assumptions. Part of the problem I would have faced had I attempted to ask about ritual in general would have been the words to use. If, simple-minded, I expected a specific term for the concept I hunted, I would not have found exactly what I wanted. This will, I hope, become clearer below. A dictionary does not contain the sum of concepts in a culture, for some concepts may require a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, even a book for their isolation. If a technical term or a neologism be devised and gain currency, the idea now dignified by naming does not thereby emerge winged as a concept, having been before something other and less fully formed.