Quotes About Vocabulary

English is a beautiful language, a remarkably precise language with a million words to choose from to deliver your exact shade of meaning.

The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

Despite no education, Mrs. Finn always is more in charge of word meanings than I am. She is especially in charge of Good and Bad. My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

morphological

Graham spoke plainly and directly. Convinced that the average person had a working vocabulary of six hundred words, he made a point to stick with common words and short sentences. Though he never put it exactly this way, he instinctively grasped the import of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's recipe for rabbit stew: first "you have to catch the rabbit.

The Balti had as many names for rock as the Inuit have for snow.

They said "whar" for where, "thar "for there, "critter" for creature, "nekkid" for naked, "wider" for widow, and "younguns" for young ones. They were always "fixin" to do something, or go "sparkin" instead of courting, and the younguns "growed up" instead of grew up. Children were referred to as "little shits".

Thomas loved words, particularly if he didn't understand them.

fluent speech, there are no real spaces between words, so when two words frequently appear together they can easily fuse into one.

people find names for things they feel the need to talk about.

The mind cannot just manufacture words for abstract concepts out of thin air – all it can do is adapt what is already available.

word that is not actively used by one generation will not be heard by the next generation and will then be lost forever.

Japanese used to have a color word, ao, that spanned both green and blue.

He loved the stuff. But unfortunately he couldn't say "Propamidine." In fact nobody on the entire establishment could say it except Charlie the farm foreman and he only thought he could say it. He called it "Propopamide" but his lordship had the utmost faith in him.

Gently I pointed out that it should be "sheep," and though he was so tired that he could hardly keep his eyes open, he launched into an interrogation as to why the singular should be the same as the plural and wanted to know all the other English words which had this peculiarity.

Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.

Words which he did not understand he said over and over to himself till he had learnt them by heart: and through them he had glimpses of the real world about them.

Ha!" I said. "Ha, ha, ha." Yeah, for a word guy, I sometimes run out of them.

Words do not necessarily make us moral. And there have been presidents before who have stumbled over syntax and looked foolish when the words they have been forced to speak have been their own. But Trump is uniquely stunted. A child listening to two of his speeches could reproduce a third without the use of a dictionary.

Every sport, every profession, every group united by a single passion draws on a lexicon that is uniquely theirs, and theirs for a reason.

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity.

A German psychologist says that women talk more than men because they have a bigger vocabulary. But, it evens out because men only listen half the time.