Vocabulary Quotes

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

~ Alan Bradley

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

~ James D. Nicoll

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.

~ Baltasar Gracián

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

~ Stephen King

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, tuned the English tongue.

~ Harold Bloom

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield

~ Philip Zaleski

Spy' is such a short ugly word. I prefer 'espionage.' Those extra three syllables really say something.

~ Howard Tayler

How many words are you having trouble with, sir?Just the ones that I've highlighted.I count at least a dozen, and I haven't gotten out of the first paragraph.That's as far as I got, too. I'm not sure you and I speak the same language.

~ Howard Tayler

OK, so the guy is cool, but... I mean own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is... this is... total vocabulary failure!

~ Douglas Adams

He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.

~ Frank Herbert

To enjoy and learn from what you read you must understand the meanings of the words a writer uses. You do yourself a grave disservice if you read around words you don’t know, or worse, merely guess at what they mean without bothering to look them up.For me, reading has always been not only a quest for pleasure and enlightenment but also a word-hunting expedition, a lexical safari.

~ Charles Harrington Elster

A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age group. It comes from reading books above one.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Those were all big words, to be sure, but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the acts of searching and gathering always expand the number of usable words.

~ Roy Peter Clark

This document outlines our plan to perpetrate insurance fraud, insider trading, and character assassination....hopefully tripling our paycheck on this job.Okay, see? Those words I understand just fine. Use them more often.-Lieutenant Massey Reynstein & Captain Tagon

~ Howard Tayler

I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.

~ Jack Vance

In so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana.

~ Madeleine L'engle

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

~ Woody Allen

She had to fight against developing too combative a personality or becoming altogether a misanthrope. She suddenly caught herself. Misanthrope is someone who dislikes everybody, not just men.And they certainly had a word for someone who hates women: misogynist. But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.

~ Carl Sagan

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.

~ Henry Hazlitt

We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.

~ Abigail Adams

Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.

~ A.s. Byatt

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.

~ John Dewey

We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.

~ Alberto Manguel

A true lady should have the wit and the imagination, or at least the very restraint, to express herself without resorting herself to such base vocabulary.

~ Ari Marmell

I collect words--they are sweets in the mouth of sound.

~ Sally Gardner

I like to quote Shakespeare. But in this case, the rapper Eminem said it best: Words are a motherfucker.

~ Jillian Keenan

In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Mr. Treadstone believed that there was always an apposite word. The English language, after all, was the richest in the world. If you couldn’t find the apposite word, if you found your language slipping into the mire of vagueness and obscurity, this meant that you needed to work on your vocabulary. Because the apposite word certainly existed – and it was very eager to make your acquaintance.

~ Gavin Extence

The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God's name would you want to make things words by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?

~ Stephen King

I will not impress you with words, I will prove to you their definition. It’s a genuine vocabulary.

~ Soar

By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension.

~ Ben Carson

It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.

~ Kate Dicamillo

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary.

~ Margaret Edson

The more words you know, the more clearly and powerfully you will think...and the more ideas you will invite into your mind.

~ Wilfred Funk

Few activities are as delightful as learning new vocabulary.

~ Tim Gunn

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

~ J.k. Rowling

With my sometimes blunt indecent vocabulary & very vivid imagination, I wonder if I should be writing other kinds of content.

~ April Mae Monterrosa

The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means suffering. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

~ Milan Kundera