Quotes About Vocabulary

Jack Paar mentioned that he once had said to a young friend, "Why do you kids use 'cool' to mean 'hot'?" The friend replied, "Because you folks used up the word 'hot' before we came along.

As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet

I use the word love loosely, and only because my vocabulary is unequal to the task of describing the precise nature of that maze, that forest of feelings

she'd stumble over a word

Words, it seems, are like felt pens. If you don't use them for a while they dry up.

I will never forget my puzzlement when, in a vocabulary list, it presented the verb thaumazo, offering this helpful thought: "thaumazo, I wonder, or marvel at. This is easily remembered by thinking of the English word 'thaumaturge.'" And I suppose that was true, since I've never forgotten it.

This or that is proclaimed awesome every second sentence - and we have lost a wonderful English word.

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, working for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed, and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

When you are falling short in vocabulary to explain the emotion in your story.Than you are writing the right story

Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty; Greek three; and English simply one.

I tell you, mate, I've learned a whole new bunch of swear words today.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style.

Is thyselves even a word?

Turkish." Vocabulary was deleted, new words added. Place-names all over the country were Turkified (for example, "Smyrna" became "Izmir"), which only added confusion and another obfuscating layer to the buildup of historical sediment.

She hesitated, searching in her scant vocabulary of taken for granted health the precise word to convey the inchoate distress, the alien sense of something gone wrong.

Bollocks, I thought, or testiculi or possibly testiculos if we were using the accusative.

When it comes to clothing, gentlemen's personal gentlemen have a comprehensive vocabulary of euphemisms. 'Bold' translates as 'ostentatious', 'lively' as 'clown-like', and 'striking' as 'obscene'.

press-ganged', 'taking the wind out of your sails', 'shot across the bows', 'loose cannon', 'shipshape', 'batten down the hatches' belong more obviously to the sea. Others such as 'close quarters', 'cut and run', 'fathoming' something, 'broad in the beam' and the 'cut of your jib' take a moment

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.

Good art-writers break conventions, hold a few sacrosanct, innovate their own. They measure their limits by instinct, not by rote. Mostly they learn by seeing miles of art, and reading good literature in bulk. There is no substitute, for a writer, for possessing a natural ear for language; a rich vocabulary; a flair for varied sentence structures; an original opinion; some arresting ideas to share. I can teach you none of that.