Thunder is Donner is tonnerre is гром is any other number of things in any other language. Yes, a word is a vibration in the atmosphere, but that vibration has no intrinsic meaning beyond what we apply to it. Gift pronounced by an English speaker is close to the same vibrational pattern as Gift spoken by a German speaker but the thing refered to is not at all the same in the two languages. I could say barksnoogle but that doesn't mean that there is anything out there in Reality that it refers to unless we, as a reasonably large group use it to refer to something out in Reality. Similarly, we can use a word that we all agree on the meaning of and it still doesn't have to have an actual referent in Reality. We can speak of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all agree what it means, but that doesn't mean that there actually is a Flying Spaghetti Monster out there in Reality.
