what's the issue?

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously said: "In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use":

Meaning is use: Wittgenstein on the limits of language – Philosophy for change

And that's the point with most words - that they don't actually 'mean' anything until we know how it's being used.

For example: the word 'issue' has lots of uses and meanings today:

What is the meaning of Current Issues? - MyEnglishTeacher.eu Blog

What is Issue date? Definition and meaning

Do you have an issue around 'issues around'? | Macmillan Dictionary Blog

meaning - What does 'address an issue' mean? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Difference between - Problem, Trouble & Issue - Free Spoken English Lesson - YouTube

Here is the wordsmith Peter Trudgill writing about the issues around issue:

The word issue started being used in English in around 1300, having
originally being brought to Britain in the Anglo-Norman language by William the Conqueror’s followers. Its origins lie in the Latin exutus (originally exitus), the past participle of exire ’to go out’, with exutus ’gone out’ then morphing into issu in Anglo-Norman French.

The range of meanings for the word in 14th Century English reflected this source rather clearly, and included ‘exit, outflow, outlet’ and ‘offspring, children’.
...
By the 19th Century, the word was also being used to refer to any important point, contentious or not, which had to to be decided on – at a meeting, for example.
From there, it was not too big a leap for issue to acquire the additional sense of a point which could not be decided on, an unresolved conflict. This meaning seems to have made its first appearance in the 1990s.
More recently its meaning has been extended further still. Here are some contemporary examples: “He seemed nice enough at first, but it turns out he’s got a lot of issues.” Or “She has serious anger issues,” and “I’ve got some issues with his behaviour.”
More examples are: “We have to become better at resolving some of the issues which can lead to depression… the fuel shortage is still causing issues for bus operators… the housing crisis has scope for engagement with the Church to help address the issue.”
It can be seen from these examples that issue is now showing every sign of having quite simply turned into a synonym for ’problem’. The give-away is that English speakers now talk, not just of discussing issues, or tackling issues, but of solving issues.

Changing times cloud the issue - The New European

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