Linguistic Nuance Quotes

It depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

Faggot never meant "gay" when I was a kid. You kind of knew that you could call a gay person faggot if you were ignorant, but nobody ever called someone a faggot if they were gay.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

The exact meaning of irony is so narrow that the word is hardly worth using; in its broad, current definition, it's a euphemism for sarcasm. 'I'm not being sarcastic; I'm being ironic.' No, you're not. You're evading the responsibility for being sarcastic.

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.

Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more.

In English, there is one word for sister. In Chinese, there are two separate words, for elder and younger sister. This is actually a translation problem because if you see the word sister, you don't know how to translate it to Chinese because you don't know if it's an elder sister or younger.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.

The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.

My bag is approaching something and taking it to another place. Like words-you take a word and by the time you've finished with it, you milk it and you go through the emotion of what it is, what it means there and then.

When I work in English, I'd say I don't see a big difference in my rapport with my team or the actors. When I work in English or French, the music of the language is different, but beyond that music, in the depths, it's the same.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'

Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

We don't murder, we kill.... You don't murder animals, you kill them.

What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.

Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

The boys had asked why, if it acted slowly, was it called quicksand. The Mollusks had replied that, as far as they were concerned, most English names for things were silly. The word that they used for quicksand was a deep grunt that translated roughly to "uh-oh.

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.