The word ‘meaning’ is itself hard to define,
Ogden and Richards gave some definitions of ‘meaning’, which include:
To have a precise and unique definition of every word is something possible only in a Utopian society. Once we have labelled every emotion, action, objects, natural phenomena etc., then the language would not evolve, it would remain perfect and static. Clearly this is not the case the languages in our world.
Meaning also does not lie completely independently in the words, since they can be used outside of their literal meaning, they may be used as parts of idioms, proverbs or in other metaphorical ways.
If we look at the definition of a word in the dictionary, it will be described using more words. There is no matching of a linguistic sign with something outside language.
Language allows us to bring about certain notions of things in those we communicate with. These notions are tied to the words we use, among other factors. The notions tied to a word are unique for everyone, we have no way of knowing that one person’s notion of a word is identical to another person’s notion of a word.
We can try to see if they are identical, but in order to check we again use more words, asking questions about their notions. Thus to some degree, there is no escape from language.