Quotes About Communication

Every marriage needs one skeptic to keep it safe. But a marriage of two skeptics will fail to thrive.

We argue, but we never change each other's minds. We only get farther apart.

I live in fear of making an honest mistake in conversation followed by some kind of Maoist-style recrimination session.

It's tiring to carry the weight of eternally unsaid words.

Telephone books are, like dictionaries, already out of date the moment they are printed....

Charientism (n.) A rhetorical term to describe saying a disagreeable thing in an agreeable way. If I knew how to say disagreeable things in an agreeable fashion I most likely would not be spending most of my time siting alone in a room, reading the dictionary.

Along with tableity (the condition of being a table) and paneity (the state of being bread), cellarhood is a wonderful example of the spectacular ways English has of describing things that no ever thinks it necessary to describe.

Contrary to what many self-help books would have you believe, adding a great number of obscure words to your vocabulary will not help you advance in the world. You will not gain new friends through this kind of endeavor, nor will it help you in the workplace.

Preantepenult (adj.) Not the last, not the one before the last, and not the one before the one before the last. The next one. A sterling example of how it often can be far more confusing to use one word than several. It is far easier to say "the third from the last" than preantepenult. Prend

Vocabularian (n.) One who pays too much attention to words. In the past I have been accused by various parties of paying too much attention to words. Which is true, I suppose; but what else do I have to pay attention to? Vomiturient

Anglo-Saxon tends not to lend itself to long and elaborate words that have strung together three or four affixes to create a rhetorical term for a very obscure thing. While

The first recorded use to date of OMG is from 1917, and reads in full "I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis—O.M.G. (Oh! My God!)—Shower it on the Admiralty!" The citation comes from a letter by one John Arbuthnot Fisher, who happens to have been the admiral in charge of the British navy (a position known as first sea lord), and was written to Winston Churchill, staunch defender of both the English people and their language.

TEXAN: "Where are you from?" HARVARD STUDENT: "I am from a place where we do not end our sentences with prepositions." TEXAN: "OK, where are you from, jackass?" —Variation on an old joke

Sesquihoral (adj.) Lasting an hour and a half. Because sometimes you just don't feel like saying "an hour and a half." Short-thinker

Heterophemize (v.) To say something different from what you mean to say. Think back on all the things you've said in life that you truly wish you hadn't. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just claim afterward that you had been heterophemizing, and be instantly forgiven? Homodoxian

Foreplead (v.) To ask too much in pleading. You are pleading when you ask for your job back; you are forepleading when you ask for a raise to go with it. Fornale

We all care about language, some of us more than others, but the degree to which one is willing to humiliate or upbraid others should not stand as an indication of how much one cares.

Yepsen (n.) The amount that can be held in two hands cupped together; also, the two cupped hands themselves. A measurement that has never really caught on like the teaspoon, the yepsen also falls firmly within the category of things for which you never thought there was a word—at least, not until some interfering busybody like me came along and told you what it was. Yesterneve

The Verbalist, 1894

Among people who might be described as having at least a passing regard for the English language, there are few instances of usage that evoke a desire to mutilate more than the perceived misuse of literally.

Or we reference Winston Churchill, who was famously reported to have written "This is the kind of tedious/arrant nonsense up with which I will not put," in response to an overweening staffer having removed a preposition from some of his writing. (However, as with many quotes that are purported to have originated with the former prime minister of Great Britain, the author was someone other than Churchill).*

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

Many can argue; not many converse

A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.