Thus we say, “By ‘kilogram’ I mean the weight of one liter of water”, “By ‘A’ I mean ‘B’”, where B is an explanation of “A”. But there is also the intransitive use: “I said that I was sick of it and meant it.” Here again, meaning what you said could be called “retracing it”, “laying an emphasis on it.” But using the word “meaning” in this sentence makes it appear that

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it must have sense to ask, “What did you mean?”, and to answer, “By what I said I meant what I said”; treating the case of “I mean what I say” as a special case of “By saying ‘A’ I mean ‘B’.” In fact one uses the expression, “I mean what I mean” to say, “I have no explanation for it.” The question, “What does this sentence p mean?”, if it doesn't ask for a translation of p into other symbols, has no more sense than “what sentence is formed by this sequence of words?”

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.