Quotes About Language

The Nerds became so popular that the word nerd was added to some dictionaries.

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.

Don't get me wrong," continued Jenna, "I have nothing against people with good working vocabularies. I'd like to think I have one. And sometimes a less common word needs to be used to convey a nuance, or achieve a necessary level of precision. But if something can be said simply, it should be. Using big words isn't impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.

sometimes a less common word needs to be used to convey a nuance, or achieve a necessary level of precision. But if something can be said simply, it should be. Using big words isn't impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.

Was I the only person in the world clueless enough to have always thought that AD meant After Death,

I had taken German in high school, and I was truly horrible at it.

You know, would simply use the word use, rather than utilize the word utilize.

Using big words isn't impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.

And sometimes a less common word needs to be used to convey a nuance, or achieve a necessary level of precision. But if something can be said simply, it should be. Using big words isn't impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.

The enemy is conventional language; the antidote is poetry and mild intoxicants.

Europeans have been deflating the language of anti-fascism ahead of a time when they might need it.

Prose this bad can only occur when the author is trying to hide something. A theoretical physicist like Sheldon Lee Glashow cannot afford to write in the unreadable prose of the social sciences. He needs to communicate exceptionally complex truths in as simple and clear a language as possible.

fascism'. 1 Yet however abused, anybody offering

In the wake of Cologne and other similar attacks one could hear the language deteriorate around the fringes. Street movements began to talk of all arrivals into Europe as 'rapefugees'. In Paris I met an elected official who referred to all migrants as 'refu-jihadists'. These were unamusing as well as insulting terms for anybody who knew first hand that some at least of the people who had come were fleeing rape or escaping jihad.

In the place of religion came the ever-inflating language of 'human rights' (itself a concept of Christian origin).

Cumberbatch got into a 'race row' because he used an outmoded term. Jeong got into a race row because over a period of years she had repeatedly used the same racial epithets in a derogatory way, and appeared to have enjoyed doing

The new Labour Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said that it would be wrong to describe such attacks as 'Islamic terrorism' because these terrorists were in fact behaving contrary to their faith. Henceforth, she said, it would be more appropriate to describe such events as 'anti-Islamic activity'.

Whereas a term that one person may use unwittingly can in some cases be levelled against them (Cumberbatch), in other cases extreme terms which people are using knowingly do not in fact count as being the words they have used. This is the explanation that Klein, El-Wardany and others have given. Whereas some people unwittingly use the wrong term and can be castigated for it, other people use terms that are so wrong and so extreme and yet no especial castigation is due.

Estupefactos, nos adentramos por último en el territorio más pantanoso de todos: el de quienes afirman que entre nosotros hay un número considerable de personas que viven en un cuerpo equivocado y que, por tanto, las pocas certezas que le quedaban a la sociedad (incluidas las certezas arraigadas en la ciencia y el lenguaje) deben ser reformuladas de arriba abajo.

Modeling the world mathematically is as uniquely a human trait as language or art, but you would rarely find anyone complaining of being "reduced to a poem" or "reduced to a painting.

Writing well is more than mechanics, but it is not less.

Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary.

God blesses giving, so every use of language, down to the lowliest tweet, ought to be thought of as a gift to others.

The Anglo-Saxons had a great word for the right word, the word that you need right now, when another one simply would not do. That word is wordriht.