You might want to look at Wittgenstein.
In his early work he went hard on this approach, and insisted that "hey philosophy is dumb", just agree on the definitions and then chase through the implications.
In his later work he realised that this is impossible. Words have contextual meaning that is revealed by their usage and you can't nail down full and complete definitions in advance.
What you're talking about absolutely can and will never work. We have tried it and seen it fail.
Other way round. The nickname/insult was saying Germans are warlike barbarians like Atila the Hun and the rest of the the Huns.