A felt meaning, to use Eugene Gendlin’s term, is an attractor in a meaning space. The more significant it is felt to be, the more it will attract thought-signs that can carry its significance, and immediate objects to which it can be applied. A newly experienced meaning especially will tend to increase the breadth of whatever sign conveys it, i.e. the sign will be applied to as broad a range of objects as possible. This is most obvious in the case of a child learning a new word, as John Dewey observed:
A newly acquired meaning is forced upon everything that does not obviously resist its application, as a child uses a new word whenever he gets a chance or as he plays with a new toy. Meanings are self-moving to new cases. In the end, conditions force a chastening of this spontaneous tendency. The scope and limits of application are ascertained experimentally in the process of application. The history of science, to say nothing of popular beliefs, is sufficient indication of the difficulty found in submitting this irrational generalizing tendency to the discipline of experience. To call it a priori is to express a fact; but to impute the a priori character of the generalizing force of meanings to reason is to invert the facts. Rationality is acquired when the tendency becomes circumspect, based upon observation and tested by deliberate experiment.
— John Dewey, 1925 (ED2:59)
Rationality then is a symptom of semiotic self-control, the key to learning from experience.