§55

- This passage might help in getting clearer about §50.

Someone might make the following argument:
1. It must be possible to describe the state of affairs where everything destructible is destroyed.
2. The description from 1. will contain words.
3. What corresponds to the words in the description of 1. cannot be destroyed (because everything destructible has been destroyed and so what remains must be indestructible) - the words would have no meaning if nothing corresponded to them.
So
C. What the names in language signify must be indestructible.

Wittgenstein makes several points in response to this:
(i) Wouldn't the description be composite and so destructible?
(ii) Names don't lose their meaning when their bearer is destroyed.
BUT
(iii) Paradigms/samples - if they are destroyed then the corresponding phrase/name loses its meaning.

Presumably Wittgenstein is thinking here of something like the standard metre. If our use of the phrase '1 metre long' is used in accordance with the standard of the standard metre in Paris then ni destroying the standard metre we would no longer be able to say that anything was one metre long.