03/02/2020 Stocker v Stocker [2019] UKSC 17 (3 April 2019) to regard the two definitions as the only possible meanings which he could consider or, at the very least, the starting point for his analysis, rather than a cross-check or confirmation of the correct approach. 25. Therein lies the danger of the use of dictionary definitions to provide a guide to the meaning of an alleged defamatory statement. That meaning is to be determined according to how it would be understood by the ordinary reasonable reader. It is not fixed by technical, linguistically precise dictionary definitions, divorced from the context in which the statement was made. 26. Moreover, once the verb, “strangle” is removed from its context and given only two possible meanings before it is reconnected to the word, “tried” the chances of a strained meaning are increased. The words must be taken together so as to determine what the ordinary reasonable reader would understand them to mean. Mitting J examined the word “strangle” in conspicuous detail before considering it in conjunction with the word, “tried”. Having determined that “strangle” admitted of only two possible meanings, he then decided that “tried” could be applied to only one of these. Underpinning his reasoning is the unarticulated premise that “to try” is necessarily “to try and fail”. Since Mr Stocker had not failed to constrict his wife’s throat, the judge concluded that the only feasible meaning of the words was that he had tried (and failed) to kill her. But that is not how the words are used in common language. If I say, “I tried to regain my breath”, I would not be understood to have tried but failed to recover respiratory function. 27. On the meaning found by the judge at para 37 of his judgment (that Mr Stocker was dangerous to any woman with whom he lived), Sharp LJ at para 21 of her judgment said: “The judge’s reference to the respondent’s dangerousness was merely his overall characterisation of the impression the [comments made by Mrs Stocker on Ms Bligh’s Facebook wall] conveyed, in the light of the discrete meanings he had found them to bear (the respondent had tried to kill etc ). This was not a freestanding meaning therefore detached from the meanings complained of, nor was this a characterisation which founds an appeal that the judge was wrong; indeed to my mind, in the light of the meanings found by the judge, this overall characterisation of what was alleged was self-evidently correct.” (Emphasis added) 28. Plainly, the Court of Appeal considered (as did, indeed, the judge) that that meaning was dependent, to some extent at least, on the correctness of Mitting J’s conclusion as to the meaning to be given to the words, “tried to strangle me”. The passage quoted was in reaction to Mr Price’s argument that the judge was wrong to have fastened on that meaning when it had not been advanced by Mr Stocker. Sharp LJ had observed of this argument that the judge was not bound to accept either party’s contention on meaning; his task was “to identify the single meaning of the words complained of within the relevant area of contention”. For reasons that will appear, it is important to note the two aspects of Sharp LJ’s reasoning: first that the judge was entitled to fix on a meaning which had not been advanced by either party; and, secondly, that his choice of meaning was influenced by his findings in relation to the first defamatory meaning - that Mrs Stocker’s words “he tried to strangle me” were to be taken as meaning that her husband had tried to kill her. 29. Sharp LJ then turned to the question of justification. She referred to an argument advanced on behalf of Mrs Stocker that the judge had failed to advert to section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952 https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2019/17.html 7/16