Quotes About Semantics

You can make a text mean anything, especially if it's old and full of ambiguities.

Lo que dices es hábil pero es un juego de palabras. ?¿Conoces tú algo que no sea un juego de palabras?

Letters couldn't care less whether what is written with them is true or false.

The dictionary is an ossuary of empty words.

James, you ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

beautifully bungled prepositions. Language

Unusually among European languages, English has distinct words for 'story' and 'history' rather than the same word for both: 'Was für eine Geschichte!' means 'What a story!' rather than 'an excellent history book', and une histoire can be tittle-tattle in the street as well as a work of historical scholarship. For Winston Churchill, there was never any distinction.

Griddle cakes, pancakes, hot cakes, flapjacks: why are there four names for grilled batter and only one word for love?

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable

Semantics matters. Because the word cause is commonly taken to mean direct cause, climate scientists, trying to be precise, have too often shied away from attributing causation of a particular hurricane, drought, or fire to global warming.

In cognitive science there is a name for this phenomenon. It's called hypocognition—the lack of the ideas you need, the lack of a relatively simple fixed frame that can be evoked by a word or two.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

How come liberals never admit that they're liberal? They've now come up with a new word called 'progressive,' which I thought was an insurance company but apparently it's a label.

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.

Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.

Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

Words are loaded pistols.

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

Words such as truth, art, veracity, or anything are stupid in themselves.