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According to Saussure, the meaning of a word or sign is not inherent in the sign itself. Rather, it exists in the difference between it and other signs. The meaning of the word beer lies in the distinction between beer and deer, or beer and bear, etc . . . The problem, then would be that the list of other signifiers is essentially infinite. The meaning of a word, according to this theory, is not one specific thing, rather it is strung out across the distinctions between it and an entire galaxy of other words. As Terry Eagleton states, "Since the meaning of a sign is a matter of what it its not, its meaning is always in some sense absent from it too. [The meaning] is not fully present in any one sign alone, but is rather a kind of flickering of presence and absence together."