Quotes About Vocabulary

I'm not actually perishing, but I do feel like I die a little every time someone uses 'literally' to mean 'really.'

I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.

I have a very inquisitive mind, and I like to know. Like, if somebody uses a term and I don't understand, I always look it up.

There are many bad things in this world of ours, but the use of the word 'monetize' has to rank high among them. Also, 'incentivize.' Actually, all the '-ize' words, like 'contextualize' and 'utilize' and 'prioritize.' And - this is almost too horrible to type - 'juniorize.'

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

If only he had a way with words he

I was only good at one thing: words. I had read more, much more, than anybody else, and I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

Nature is the best and really the only real vocabulary that an artist can legitimately work with.

To make dictionaries is dull work.

The struggle to make an absolute statement in an individually conceived vocabulary accounts for the profound tensions inherent in the best modern work.

I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words.

I know what the structure of the language is.

You should take notes whenever you hear interesting or original language.

So avoid using the word 'very' because it's lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don't use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won't do in your essays.

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

I've always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it's amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.

I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

Smell is of all senses by far the most evocative: perhaps because we have no vocabulary for it – nothing but a few poverty-stricken approximations to describe the whole vast complexity of odour – and therefore the scent, unnamed and unnamable, remains pure of association; it cannot be called upon again and again, and blunted, by the use of a word; and so it strikes afresh every time, bringing with it all the circumstances of its first perception. This

Stephen, what is the French for a double sister-block, coaked? With a pair of them and a proper hold-fast, I could raise the Temple.' 'A double sister-block, coaked? The Dear alone can tell. I do not even know what it is in English.

One barrier... is the impoverishment of classroom language, the failure to cultivate a common vocabulary about inquiry, explanation, argument and problem solving.

Unlike sciences, literature as art relies on societal acceptance of a certain vocabulary.

rabid distrust of what they consider authority without evidently once stopping to consider the rigid authoritarianism implicit in the rigid uniformity of their own quote unquote nonconformist uniform, vocabulary, attitudes

Words, words, words.