Full Idea
Perhaps the modern view is best expressed as saying that "water" has no definition at all, at least in the traditional sense, and is a proper name of a specific substance.
Gist of Idea
The new view is that "water" is a name, and has no definition
Source
Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III)
Book Reference
'Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds', ed/tr. Schwartz,Stephen P. [Cornell 1979], p.30
A Reaction
This assumes that proper names have no definitions, though I am not clear how we can grasp the name 'Aristotle' without some association of properties (human, for example) to go with it. We need a definition of 'definition'.