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I apologize both for my lateness, and for my brevity. It's all related :)
Perek 8 continues with the discussion about what people actually mean when they say certain words, and how this determination impacts the scope of nedarim that are made. The overall focus is on what people mean when they say that the terms of their neder will extend until a certain time (and there is ambiguity as to what exactly they mean :)
A few points of interest:
The discussion in Mishna 4 is very recognizable to us, as to this day we all mean slightly different things when we use the terms "Summer". We might mean the day of the summer solstice in July, or we might mean "the day after the kids finish school" in June, or we might mean "Memorial Day", or even other things, all depending on context and on who we are.
Mishna 5 invokes a debate that is well-known right now to anyone who observes a yahrzeit in Adar. When a year has two Adars, which one is the "real" Adar? The various customs in play today regarding yahrzeits are presaged in the Mishna!
Mishna 7 is particularly interesting, as it posits situations in which a neder may simply disappear. When a neder is intended as a vehicle for ensuring that an honor is bestowed upon a person, if that person contends that she feels honored even without the fulfillment of the terms of the neder, the neder simply goes away, which is sort of extraordinary. The same Mishna explores situations in which a person takes a neder simply to get someone else off their back, i.e. to get them to stop insisting that they do something (such as come over for dinner, or marry their sister). The Mishna recognizes that this "get them off my back" kind of neder is often spoken in hyperbolic terms, and should not be halachikly taken literally.
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