Word Definition Quotes

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

The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled.

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly - 'Did God say not to eat from any tree?' In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available.

County library? Reference desk, please. Hello? Yes, I need a word definition. Well, that's the problem. I don't know how to spell it and I'm not allowed to say it. Could you just rattle off all the swear words you know and I'll stop you when...Hello?

‎Perfect? How can you define a word without concrete meaning?

We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid.

Don't hate the word, playa; hate the dictionary.

You see failed vocabulary in the adult world so often, and it's often because once you reach a certain age you're kind of embarrassed to go look up a word if you don't know what it means.

[Calvin and Hobbes are playing Scrabble] Calvin: Ha! I've got a great word and it's on a "Double word score" box! Hobbes: "ZQFMGB" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel! Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that! Hobbes: I'm looking it up. Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the Xs and Js! Hobbes: What's your score for ZQFMGB? Calvin: 957.

me: why is it upset? shouldn't it be downset? gideon: i will file a lawsuit against the dictionaries first thing tomorrow morning. we're going to tear merriam a new asshole and throw webster inside of it.

Always, as a child, I would go around the house, and if I found a word that I didn't know the meaning of, I would write it down and ask my parents to define it and try to memorise it.

I used to like the word of the day and when I read, highlight words that I didn't know and look them up.

I never understood whether the word 'amnesty' is correct or not. Maybe I am not very intelligent but I checked the dictionary to find the meaning.

I'm not sure what 'cheeky' means. I hear it used so much and in so many different ways, I can't identify the real meaning of it.

It was a long time before I understood what the word 'specific' was. I remember being a kid and thinking it was 'pacific,' and being like, 'Can you be more pacific?' And I believed that for maybe five, six years until someone was like, 'It's 'specific.''

The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.

Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.

Words derive their power from the original word.

The dictionary is a closed system in which someone interested in the meaning of a word can go around and around and end up exactly where he started, simply because words are defined in terms of other words, and these, in turn, are defined in terms of still other words.

If anything is guaranteed to annoy a lexicographer, it is the journalistic habit of starting a story with a dictionary definition.

Lexicographers are language reporters.