All my life I've identified as a hot-weather girl. None of this snow and gloves and puffer jacket business for me. Give me sweat over sweaters any day. From the sun and heat I can find shade and fans and water.

But there is a kind of cold that slips under the skin that no heating or blanket can help. It's like living with perpetual ague.

And yet the temperatures we've been hitting these days makes me long to sit in one of those freezers in gas stations from which you acquire ice to put in coolers. I don't know if this ice has any other purpose on earth. I have never asked it and, curiously, it has never opened up to me.

Thinking about the weather takes me to ideas of tolerance. Walk with me.

Here are some words. They are not bad words. They are not words we habitually misuse. We may overuse them. Perhaps we are not always absolutely sincere when we say them. But I don't think it's malicious: I think we're reaching for meanings, and these words are the closest we find.

On behalf of the Cambridge Dictionary and myself, I offer three words for your consideration: tolerance, acceptance and understanding. We - the dictionary and I - may or may not be engaged in a test of wills. (The dictionary is entirely unaware of my internal wrangling; please do not contact it on this matter.)

I will let the dictionary go first. Tolerance: 'willingness to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them.' It also allows: 'the ability to deal with something unpleasant or annoying,' or 'to continue existing despite bad or difficult conditions.' Next, acceptance: 'general agreement that something is satisfactory or right, or that someone should be included in a group.' Also: 'the fact of accepting a difficult or unpleasant situation.' And last, understanding (isn't it always?): 'knowledge about a subject, situation, etc. or about how something works.' Or, says Cam, 'a positive relationship between two people or groups in which they feel sympathy for each other.' And you can add, 'sympathetic and caring.'

Now me.

There's something begrudging about the definition of tolerance. Acceptance is not all that much fun either. It's like vile cough syrup. It's tortured, as in the days of yore when parents could force their children to go to birthday parties for other children they barely knew (yes, that does sound like a personal problem).

Yet upon these dreadful-sounding things we've built nations (including our own), signed agreements and treaties, and told people these were word by which to live. Why does 'understanding' get such short shrift?

I imagine it really is too much to ask. All we can truly hope for is that we have in us enough put-up-with-ness so there's not all-out war every day.

My problem with tolerance and acceptance is (she says flakily) they're so unloving. I can't possibly be the only one who has a problem with that.

I've used the dictionary as a sort of buffer between my inside voice and what's fit for print. Not the God-given purpose