Dictionary Quotes
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I can hardly believe that I even know this, but I am aware that Noah Webster's original dictionary, apart from being the first truly American lexicography, was a kind of line in the sand. It claimed a very discrete, American form of the English language, explicitly to compare it to the English of our erstwhile colonial masters who had been operating under Dr. Johnson's dictionary rules for well over a century.
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He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
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I do love perusing the dictionary to find how many words I don't use - words that have specific, sharp, focused meaning. I also love the sound of certain words. I love the sound of the word pom-pom.
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Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
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In looking up the word in Webster’s dictionary I found the term “nigger” very descriptive: “a vulgar, offensive term of hostility and contempt for the black man.” I can’t think of anything that defines better and more accurately what our position toward the nigger should be than what the dictionary said. If we are going to be for racial integrity and racial purity... we must take a hostile position toward the nigger. We must give him nothing but contempt.
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The Devil will use our words and his dictionary.
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The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary
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If you look up the word "gab" in the dictionary, it's insignificant of importance, of no substance. That's what gab is.
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If you discover a word in my book that you don't understand, ask your parents so they can look it up in the dictionary for you.
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The verb 'to darn' is explained in my pocket dictionary as follows: 'To mend by imitating the texture of the stuff, with thread and needle.' But this definition does not correspond to the work accomplished by good Chinese housewives. When they mend a sock, they do not try 'to imitate the texture of the stuff'. Their art makes no attempt at concealment: it even takes a certain pride in revealing itself.
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We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that 'thousands' has almost passed out of the dictionary.
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Cantona's expression speaking the whole French dictionary without saying a word.
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The word 'defeat' is not to be found in my dictionary, and everyone who is selected as a recruit in my army may be certain that there is no defeat for a satyagrahi.
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Success brings poise, especially avoirdupois. Success comes before work only in the dictionary.
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“You know what they say about sympathy...it's in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.”
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"Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, "of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy."
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The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.
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Now what is a wedding? Well, Webster's dictionary describes a wedding as the process of removing weeds from one's garden.
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When Molly O'Toole was looking at the colored pictures in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's big dictionary and just happened to be eating a candy cane at the same time and drooled candy cane juice on the colored pictures of gems and then forgot and shut the book so the pages all stuck together, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle didn't say, "Such a careless little girl can never ever look at the colored pictures in my dictionary again." Nor did she say, "You must never look at books when you are eating." She said, "Let's see, I think we can steam those pages apart, and then we can wipe the stickiness off with a little soap and water, like this-now see, it's just as good as new. There's nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.
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Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
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I use the dictionary all the time when I'm reading or working on scripts.
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Then idiots talk....of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce!....But show me a good opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about, and I'll show you energy.
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I am an unmarried man, as opposed to a single man. A bachelor, according to the dictionary, is a man who has never been married. An unmarried man is not married at the moment. Many of these terms have fallen into disuse.
