Top 26 Quotes About Word Usage
#1. It's still a cowl, Frederic grumbled (few things could cause him to summon up his inner courage like improper word usage).
Christopher Healy
#2. There is no more irritating fellow than the one who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or freedom, by quoting from the dictionary. Lexicographers may be respected as authorities on word usage, but they are not the ultimate founts of wisdom.
Mortimer J. Adler
#3. Nationalization, unmentionable only yesterday, has entered common usage not least because an even scarier word - depression - is next on America's list to avoid.
Frank Rich
#4. "Agnostic" is a much more recent word than "atheist", coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to mean "without knowledge of God" and acquiring the usage of "being doubtful about the existence of God."
Jim Herrick
#5. The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that 'abstract' is identified with 'vague' and 'unreal,' and 'inwardness' with a sort of traditional beatitude ... The conception of the word 'plastic' has also been limited by individual interpretations.
Piet Mondrian
#6. As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference.
Stephen Jay Gould
#7. Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a Lesbian.
Fran Lebowitz
#8. The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!).
Augusto Boal
#10. You can tell a paragraph is slipping out of control when there's a runaway use of the word 'hence.
Alain De Botton
#11. In Old English they don't say I had a dream, but there's another usage of the word - "life is but a dream," to be corny about it. It's implied with eyes wide open, rather than asleep. But I'm not a philosopher to explain myself. I wish I could. Maybe that's why I'm a musician.
Tom Verlaine
#12. According to the Captain of The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, striking your opponent or caddie at St Andrews, Hoylake or Westward Ho! meant that you lost the hole, except on medal days when it counted as a rub of the green.
Herbert Wind
#13. I've met people I didn't like. I've met people who've used words in ways I didn't like. I've never met a word I didn't like.
Jacqueline Patricks
#14. So what are people actually referring to when they talk about "deregulation"? In ordinary usage, the word seems to mean "changing the regulatory structure in a way that I like.
David Graeber
#15. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
Ayn Rand
#16. If thou wouldst hear what seemly is and fit, inquire of noble woman; they can tell, who in life's common usage hold their place by graceful deed and aptly chosen word.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#17. No' seems such a flimsy and inadequate little word to express how very little interest I have in hearing you rambling on about that particular topic.
FayJay
#18. Scholars tell us that there was no word in ancient Latin or Greek for "self" as it is understood in contemporary usage.
James Carroll
#19. Love doesn't always have to be spoken out loud.
Jay Crownover
#20. When the students were killed at Kent State, the cast voted to do a demonstration from the stage, and I abstained.
Holly Near
#21. I take it this is some obscure West Indian usage of the word 'similar' which means 'nothing at all alike'?
Neil Gaiman
#22. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the industrial-financial revolution began.
Ralph Adams Cram
#23. The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything ... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.
Arthur Adamov
#24. The word which denotes the act of baptizing, according to the usage of Greek writers, uniformly signifies or implies immersion.
Adoniram Judson
#25. As a work progresses, its power to elicit and dictate response mounts. There seems to be an optimum moment when this power is at its greatest which just precedes the point where 'elicit' is no longer apt usage. 'Dictates' is the word for this condition and tyranny is the adversary.
Richard Diebenkorn
#26. The more you think, the more you ruin things. Art has to come viscerally; otherwise, forget it.
Al Jourgensen
