Erin McKean Quotes

I would say 'woman' used to be a noun, and now it is a noun and also an adjective. And words change their functions in that way. It's one of the most common phenomena about words. They start as one thing, and they end up as something else.

Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles.

There is something like an explosion in the meaning of certain words: they have a greater value than their meaning in the dictionary.

I believe every change any word has undergone probably originated in ignorance.

Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development

The ways in which language changes never ceases to interest me.

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.

Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

In my dictionary, and everyone's dictionary in the 1970s, the word 'queer' did mean strange and unusual. There was no slur to it.

Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

I don't have any particular desire to see words making a comeback. They are of their era, after all, and that is their identity - they form part of the linguistic color of a period.

Britain's fascination with its changing language is renowned.

I'm a big believer in change and embrace the fact that English is probably the fastest-moving language in the world.

I wonder if, as a society, we will ever be able to call someone a jive tofurkey.

Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.

Words are not simple things: they take unto themselves, as they have through time, power and meaning.

The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought.

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.

Language changes. If it does not change, like Latin it dies. But we need to be aware that as our language changes, so does our theology change, particularly if we are trying to manipulate language for a specific purpose. That is what is happening with our attempts at inclusive language, which thus far have been inconclusive and unsuccessful.

I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room--a complete mess--so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following.

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.