Lexicographer Quotes

Samuel Johnson

Noah Webster

William Dwight Whitney

James Augustus Henry Murray

Lin Yutang

Adoniram Judson

E. Cobham Brewer

The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

A dash derives from "to dash," to shatter, strike violently, to throw suddenly or violently, hence to throw carelessly in or on, hence to write carelessly or suddenly, to add or insert suddenly or carelessly to or in the page. "To dash" comes from Middle English daschen, itself probably from Scandinavian-compare Danish daske, to beat, to strike. Ultimately the word is-rather obviously-echoic.

The systems which confront the intelligence remain basically unchanged through the ages, although they assume different forms... there is nothing so disastrous in science as the arrogant dogmatism which despises the past and admires nothing but the present.

Ferdinand Hoefer

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

Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in language as in politics.

William Dwight Whitney

The confident surgeon is like a military captain who by a well-timed advance changes defeat into victory, returning with the priceless trophy of life and health.

Adoniram Judson

Success and vocabulary go hand in hand. This has been proven so often that it no longer admits of argument.

Wilfred J. Funk

Not only the tools of manual labour, but also the tools of human thought — words — are subject to the laws of historical development. The history of the meanings of words is outside the area of interest of formal logic, and could not be fruitfully studied by the methods of that discipline.

Witold Doroszewski

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.

See yourself as a small child, fragile and vulnerable, and breathe in. Smile with love to this small child within yourself, and breathe out.

Barbara Ann Kipfer

From the phisito & Attorney, keepe not the truth hidden.

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait [If youth but knew, if old age but could].

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.

The English language is like a fleet of juggernaut trucks that goes on regardless. No form of linguistic engineering and no amount of linguistic legislation will prevent the cycles of change that lie ahead.

Robert Burchfield

And I don't like people who eat powdered doughnuts. I don't car how careful you are, they're just plain messy. I can't believe they taste good enough to justify getting that sugar all over everything, especially me.

The circle of the English language has a well-defined center but no discernible circumference.

James Augustus Henry Murray

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.

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

Adam Kilgarriff

The dog which remembers only to bark and not to bite, and is led through the streets as a lady's pet, is only a degenerate wolf.

Treason is the highest crime of a civil nature of which a man can be guilty.

Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.

We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.