Nothing Much

Dictionary.com defines nothing, amongst several alternatives, as "something that is nonexistent." If something is, how can it be non-existent? This was very wisely discussed here, and it might therefore seem I'm simply blithely repeating myself for the sake of posting something so as to end the inerim of not posting anything.
But anyway, Merriam Webster Online Dictionary tells us that the word nothing is a pronoun, adverb, noun and adjective, and the thing referred to by this versatile word is "something that does not exist"; a strikingly similar definition to the earlier one. So we have a word that does exist referring to something that doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, why does it need a word, might argue an economically minded intellectual; an iconoclastic Puritan of the mind. Though someone else might argue that words themselves don't exist; that they are illusions within consciousness, and so the word that refers to something that isn't also isn't; a double negative.

This point has sent me back to the online dictionary, and I see that illusion means "perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature." Which inevitably sends me in search of "objectively" to see how this illuminates the word reality controversy, and I find that objectively means "With objectivity," which is admittedly not much bloody use. Thankfully however, this "objectivity" is described as "Judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices."

A dog, to which the word dog refers, may be encountered in an act of perception, insofar as for the sake of sanity we decide to accept our senses as being innately intertwined with reality, and so this dog may be described as included within the field of observable phenomena. The symbol of the word dog may be similarly encountered like when viewing it within this very sentence. However, this is merely the visual symbolic representation of what is itself a symbol, which, by the relevant definition earlier can hardly be said to be of an observable phenomena, and so by strict grammatical rules of existence does not exist.
Which, I think, leaves us with a non-existent word referring to a non-existent something, or indeed the absence of a something with which to have a non-existence. Which in turn leaves us in a very difficult situation, none of these words existing objectively, though consolingly it could be said that there is no "difficult situation", since the entire entangling situation is an edifice built upon a language structure that does not, according to the rules of language, exist: an imaginary castle made of imaginary sand.