Quotes About Vocabulary

Flatbush accent.

Cursing's for the uncreative. They say "Frack! on Battlestar Galactica, and everyone still knows what it means.

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.

I'm over the word 'like' in conversation, and 'you know' seems to be the placeholder of choice, but when I'm writing dialogue, I tend to use those phrases because that's how people talk.

I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?

I'm interested in visual vocabulary, like Warhol was interested in that vocabulary of advertisements and television and pop culture.

We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda's attacks on America launched the nation into three wars - against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.

It is not literally true that a picture is worth a thousand words. Most people will not see what is in a picture, or will see it through the most readily available visual cliches. It takes training and an analytical vocabulary to talk about what is in a picture, and to know what to look for. A picture is worth a thousand words only for those who already have internalized an adequate vocabulary.

Smell and taste are processed in parts of our brains that are reactive and emotional rather than intellectual, which is one reason developing a good vocabulary of aromas is so difficult. It's a long journey from our lizard brain way up to where language is processed.

Why use salty when you can have brackish? It carries a sense of part-water, part-salt, too, just like the sea.

The extraordinary thing about new words is that probably only about one per cent of them are new. Most are old words revived and adapted.

My Finnish is... I'm sounding like a three-year-old, at my best. It's super hard to really have a conversation, unfortunately. I know a lot of words, and so reading signs and stuff is becoming better, or going to a supermarket. But some specific words, of course, you don't get in your first year.

I suppose you inevitably fall into habits of expression.

We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.

One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?" Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. "Did he say 'whom'?" "Yeah, but don't hit him," I said. "There is such a word." Degarmo licked his lips. "I knew there was," he said. "I often wondered where they kept it.

Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world.

The intriguing thing about playing Scrabble is that as soon as the board is set up in front of me, I don't know any words. Other than cat and bat and rat, everything disappears from the language drawer in my brain. My mother, on the other hand, who normally speaks English like a regular person, spells things like qiviut (wool of the muskox) and hake.

Asakava, k?zlar? Yoko'yu dizine oturtmuÅŸ, resimli bir kitapta yaz?lanlar? okuyordu. O yaÅŸta bir bebeÄŸin, sözcüklerin ne anlama geldiÄŸini o anda anlamas? olas? deÄŸil ama zihninde yerleÅŸen sözcük say?s? ne kadar çok olursa, iki ya??na geldiÄŸi s?ralarda konuÅŸmaya baÅŸlad???nda, kullanabildiÄŸi sözcük say?s? ç?? gibi büyür.

How was your day, Rosie?" Dad would ask when he came home from work and I'd tell him it was ebullient. Or limpid. Or dodecahedron. "That's good to hear," he'd say.

If I was in charge of the dictionary I would have a right clear-out of words. Words like 'necrophilia' I'd get rid of. If someone has that (attraction to dead bodies), I'd make them say, 'I fancy dead bodies'. Then, at least when they tell people, they might realise how mental it sounds rather than it being hidden in a posh word. And then they'll stop having the problem. The fact that it has its own word makes it seem more acceptable.

Some examples for you: 'Mi wantem' is 'I would like'. 'Mi wantem' sounds like 'Me want them', which equals 'I would like'. 'Bitwin' is 'between'. 'Bisnis' is 'business'. By now you've probably got the hang of it, so I don't have to tell you what 'Gud moning' means. If you're still struggling you're a 'dik ed'.

Julia's vocabulary was chock-full of strangely archaic words - spiffing, crumbs, jeepers - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there of every kind.

I recognize but one mental acquisition as a necessary part of the education of a lady or gentlemen, namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue.