British Lexicographer Quotes

Blues. An American dance stemming from the Foxtrot, the speed of which it reduced and into which it brought a deliberately contrived dismal atmosphere. When Blues are sung their words seem to aim at attaining to the utmost depths of gloom and inanity.

To defer anything to the Greek Calends is to defer it sine die. There were no calends in the Greek months. The Romans used to pay rents, taxes, bills, etc., on the calends, and to defer paying them to the Greek Calends was virtually to repudiate them.

E. Cobham Brewer

Women? Let's get real: we called them chicks. What they did was 'chick work', which tended to be secretarial in its myriad forms... Whatever their own agenda, girls were there for sex, joint-rolling and throwing together the all too mandatory slop.

It leaves me wanting to rejoice – isn't language wonderful, that we can do all these different things with it!

Adam Kilgarriff

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.