Best 108 quotes in «dictionary quotes» category

The dictionary contains no metaphors.

The dictionary is, however, only a rough draft.

The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around.

The first definition of gross negligence that comes up when you take out the legal dictionary is being extremely careless. The minute you say someone is extremely careless you are saying they're grossly negligent.

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

There is a breed of fashion models who weigh no more than an abridged dictionary.

There's a measure of prescriptivism and descriptivism in every dictionary. Prescriptivism believes that the language should mirror the best practices of English, and editors are prescriptivist in so far as they don't want to let things they consider to be inelegant or ungrammatical into print.

There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.

Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary.

To make dictionaries is dull work.

We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that 'thousands' has almost passed out of the dictionary.

Weird itself, even in the dictionary, is just something that is different and unexplainable. A weirdo is someone who follows their heart. Im definitely weird, aint nothing wrong with that.

When you look up 'hilarious' in the dictionary, there's a picture of you.

What's a depression? The dictionary says a depression is a dent. And what's a dent? Everybody knows a dent is a hole. And what's a hole? You tell me what's a hole! And I'll tell you that a hole is nothin'!

Who is to say who is the villain and who is the hero? Probably the dictionary.

Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.

You evidently do not suffer from "quotation-hunger" as I do! I get all the dictionaries of quotations I can meet with, as I always want to know where a quotation comes from.

You'll find sympathy in the dictionary between sh*t and suicide.

About 35-40% of the time, a player wants to create a word ending in a specific letter. This, however, is not the way we traditionally think, and, not to mention, this is not the way dictionaries are sorted. In other words, in many situations, conventional dictionaries are not arranged in an easy to use manner. This dictionary solves that problem by sorting on the last letter of the word.

A dictionary of all the words we did not say.

A good dictionary can only help.

Aleister Crowley once stated that the most important grimoire, or book of magical instruction, that anyone could ever conceivably own would be an etymological dictionary, and in my opinion he was exactly right. I keep it right here by my desk, and just 10 minutes ago it confirmed for me that I had the spelling of “proprioception” right all along, even though my spell-checker had raised a crinkly red eyebrow.

As I make my way through, I feel okayness reaching through me. The funny thing is that okayness is not a real word. It's not in the dictionary. But it's in me.

When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.

A single act is worth a thousand thoughts

FV: Annandale defines 'definition' as "an explanation of the signification of a term." Yet Oxford, on the other hand, defines it as "a statement of the precise meaning of a word." A small, perhaps negligible difference you might think. And neither, would you say, is necessarily more correct than the other? But now look up each of the words comprising each definition, and then the definitions of those definitions, and so on. Some still may only differ slightly, while others may differ quite a lot. Yet any discrepancy, large or small, only compounds that initial difference further and further, pushing each 'definition' farther apart. How similar are they then at the end of this process...assuming it ever would end? Could we possibly even be referring to the same word by this point? And we still haven't considered what Collins here...or Gage, or Funk and Wagnalls might have to say about it. Off on enough tangents and you're eventually led completely off track. ML: Or around in circles. FV: Precisely! ML: Oxford, though, is generally considered the authority, isn't it? FV: Well, it's certainly the biggest...the most complete. But then, that truly is your vicious circle - every word defined...every word in every definition defined...around and around in an infinite loop. Truly a book that never ends. A concise or abridged dictionary may, at least, have an out... ML: I wonder, then, what the smallest possible "complete dictionary" would be? Completely self-contained, that is, with every word in every definition accounted for. How many would that be, do you suppose? Or, I guess more importantly, which ones? FV: Well, that brings to mind another problem. You know that Russell riddle about naming numbers?

breathtaking, adj. Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.

suffuse, v. I don’t like it when you use my shampoo, because then your hair smells like me, not you.

The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries.

How come "burbled" gets to be in the Oxford English Dictionary but "tulgy" doesn't? Hm?

Home means always here...

Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.

I hereby propose the term “miserize”, as a verb for misery – referring to “to cause misery”.

If I were allowed to take just one book to the proverbial desert island, it might be a dictionary.

If the reader needs a dictionary to read your book then the dictionary may turn out to be a more interesting read.

I don't understand your book. Isn't every book a book of words?

If it's any consolation, Princess, I think he's a supercilious, salacious sap." "You've been reading the dictionary!" "My only hope of comprehending your conversation, my petite sesquipedalian.

I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle…. Writing in my mother tongue—at that point close to extinction—I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again…. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless.

Living with contradiction may be nothing new to humans, but acknowledging it, and accepting it are. Even the dictionary has trouble accepting a paradox, calling it 'two things that seem to be contradictory but may possibly be true.' But that's not a real paradox--a real paradox IS contradictory and IS true. So I don't even call them paradoxes anymore, I call them 'contradictory co-existing realities,' both in direct opposition to each other, both true at the same time.

In old days, instead of asking a teacher, people looked at the dictionary to know the complete definition of teacher. Now Google becomes our teacher and to know about Google, people Google it.

I want to read the entire dictionary, but I am afraid that someone is going to spoil the ending!

I wish I had a dictionary to translate mixed signals.

I opened up a dictionary And tried to find a meaning in a hurry. Turned the pages to look for the word -- "Perfect" And saw you listed there, coz I know you're worth it!

It's like a dictionary. You know the word is in there, but you need to know how to spell what you want first

It's stupid, really," I began again. "But it was this thing I read someplace, and it really got to me. It said that a dictionary is every book ever written and every book that will be written, just in a different order. And it seemed magical. You could own every book just by owning one book. I loved that. And I just had to have it,

Luckily," he went on, "you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as 'impossible' in my dictionary. In fact," he added, brandishing the abused book, "everything between 'herring' and 'marmalade' appears to be missing.

Mizuko loved reading the dictionary. She liked it when there were multiple meanings for words and when opposite meanings could be contained.

Mistake is a single page in a part of Life .... but Relation is a book of dictionary ----- So don't lose a full Book for a single page.

Never allow yourself to be defined by your past; ‘yesterday’ is just a word, not a dictionary.