Abstract: In On Denoting, Russell claims his theory of descriptions aims at rejecting Frege’s distinction between sense and reference, arguing against the existence of sense and thus advocating the view of meaning as reference. However, his translating Frege’s Sinn into “meaning” and further using the term in a variety of tangling senses lead to a series of confusion and even inconsistency in his account or argument for his theory, which to a large extent curtains the fact that his theory of descriptions fails to avoid Frege’s sense. This is in part reflected by his employing sense, sometimes disguised in the form of a kind of “meaning”, in reducing propositions that contain definite descriptions to logical forms that do not.