The occurrence of the International Workshop on Definition and Classification of Cerebral Palsy, in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, July 2004, was an encouraging sign of progress towards a collaborative attempt to reach an internationally accepted definition and classification system for cerebral palsy (CP). The definition given in this issue, apparently submitted by a small subset of workshop attendees, is disappointing in that it does little to address the four areas of imprecision encountered in previous definitions of CP, as described by Stanley et al. These four areas are: