Quotes About Language

Love is an evil word. Turn it backwards. See, see what I mean?

Take care of your words and the words will take care of you.

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a cupboard, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?

It is madness to think that knowing a language and reading a few books can create allegiances between people. Thoughts, books, ideas, words – if anything, they make you more alone, because they destroy whatever instinctive loyalties you may once have possessed.

One of the questions I hear most often regarding my plan to read the OED from cover to cover is "Why don't you just read it on the computer?" I usually respond as if the questions was "Why don't you just slump yourself on the couch and watch TV for the year?" which is not quite an appropriate reponse. It is not so much that I am anicomputer; I am resolutely and stubbornly pro-book.

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.

The OED does include schadenfreude, a word borrowed from German, which means "to take pleasure in the misfortune of another." But it left out one of my personal favorites, epicharicacy, which means the same thing as schadenfreude, and was in English dictionaries until the early nineteenth century. Misdevout

For the benefit of those half-dozen people who will see a name like Gwillim and put this book down in order to go look it up to see where it comes from — it is the Welsh version of William

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

Vanitarianism (n.) The pursuing of vanities. Only one citation is provided for this word, and it comes, rather unsurprisingly, from Thackeray, a writer who seems to have an unreasoning fondness for the word vanity. also

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

Zachary winched a few more letters onto his last name and declared himself king of the Z aficionados.

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.

All of the human emotions and experiences are right there in this dictionary, just as they would be in any fine work of literature. They just happen to be alphabetized.

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

Repertitious has not had nearly the success in entering the language that serendipitous has had, most likely because its PR team isn't nearly as good. The noun form of the latter, serendipity, was made up in the 1750s by the novelist Horace Walpole, based on Serendip (a former name for Sri Lanka). Repertitious, on the other hand, has its first mention in Thomas Blount's dictionary of 1656. Writers—1, lexicographers—0. Resentient

I FEEL AS THOUGH I AM EATING the alphabet. Twenty-six courses of letters, each with its own distinctive flavor. It is inevitable that some letters will taste delicious, others not so much. Some will have a delicate flavor, others will be more like a hearty peasant stew.

In just the first letter of the OED you will find words as magnificent as agathokakological (composed of good and evil), as delicately shaded as addubitation (the suggestion of doubt), and as odd as antithalian (opposed to fun or festivity). I

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