Quotes About Semantics

Names with indeterminate connotation are not to be confounded with names which have more than one connotation, that is to say, ambiguous words.

Nevertheless, there seems good reason for adhering to the common usage, and calling (as indeed Hobbes himself does in other places) the word sun the name of the sun, and not the name of our idea of the sun. For names are not intended only to make the hearer conceive what we conceive, but also to inform him what we believe.

Since there is no difference of meaning between round, and a round object, it is only custom which prescribes that on any given occasion one shall be used, and not the other. We shall, therefore, without scruple, speak of adjectives as names, whether in their own right, or as representative of the more circuitous forms of expression above exemplified.

Why is it that when you wipe up dust its called dusting but when you wipe up a spill its not called spilling? Just something to think about.

The limits of our cognition are not defined by the limits of our language.

What is the point of what we say? Is there any meaning to this series of propositions which constitutes our talk? And do these propositions, taken one by one, have any object? We can talk only if we set aside this question, or if we raise it as infrequently as possible.

A word, once dissected, no longer signifies anything, is nothing. Like a body that, after the autopsy, is less than a corpse.

It is important that we realize that words have meanings far beyond the dictionary definition.

Ordinary language carries with it conditions of meaning which it is easy to recognize by classifying the contexts in which the expression is employed in a meaningful manner.

Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.

Quite often people ask me 'Is there a word for... ' and go on to highlight a gap in our language that we need to fill.

the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it into a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing.

After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking' in meaning.2 Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader.

A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well—better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not.

It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it.

Language is a meaning approximator that sometimes gets too big for its britches and deceives us

No phonetic sign, except at a rudimentary, strictly speaking pre-linguistic level of vocal imitation (onomatopoeia), has any substantive relation or contiguity to that which it is conventionally and temporally held to designate.

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.

In truth, a good chunk of activity in derivative markets is driven by speculation. Part of it is obscured by semantics; the boundary between speculation and investment is always hazy. If you lost money you speculated. If you made money you were investing. Or was it the other way around?

As Mark Twain once put it, "The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

take words and make them useful,' she told me. 'drain them of all the crappy meanings they used to mean and make them mean something useful instead.

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.- Mark Twain (Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888)

Jack Paar mentioned that he once had said to a young friend, "Why do you kids use 'cool' to mean 'hot'?" The friend replied, "Because you folks used up the word 'hot' before we came along.