Quotes About Semantics

Every word has a history. Every word has an image locked into its roots.

Other potentially misleading terms include "cosmology" and "psychology." In

All grammars leak.

that is not just a relative pronoun but also a stand-alone pronoun, a demonstrative adjective, and a conjunction.

For example, post can refer to a piece of timber set upright, a position of employment, or mail.

conveying two very different senses, as when table could refer either to a piece of furniture or to a numerical chart)

The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and civilisations.

evil< is also just another word for >toilet<

sometimes a digar is just a cigar

The text has disappeared under the interpretation.

How did females become 'guys?' How did everyone become 'guys?' Remember, too, that a male guy was something of a scoundrel. And a wise guy was a fresh kid, a whippersnapper. In its most other famous evocation, men in Brooklyn said 'youse guys.' Damon Runyon referred to hustlers, gamblers, and other nefarious types as guys.

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context.

Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits; that is, they tell us what noises people make under what conditions.

Words are not the things they name. Saussere says they take distinctive meaning by contrast with other words. A square is a square because it's not a triangle, not a circle.

Words," he said, looking in my direction finally but with his eyes strangely unfocussed, as though he was really looking at a point several inches beneath my skin, "are beginning to lose their meanings.

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.

It is never a waste of time to study the history of a word.

Sometimes you say a word so many times that it loses its meaning...

The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.

Funny how one little word can mean 'full of or disposed to joy and mirth', 'homosexual' and 'rubbish'. It just shows that context is everything.

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

not by the force of arguments and opposition, but by the intricacy of the words

Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.