Lexicographer famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.
-- Ambrose Bierce

#Innovation #Lexicographer #Use
The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous. But its truth cannot be increased or its error diminished by its acceptance by the lexicographer. Each definition must stand on its own merits.
-- Benjamin Tucker

#Acceptance #Errors #Lexicographer
By the time the traditionally male lexicographers become interested in looking at fashion words, their origins are lost in the mists of time.
-- Erin McKean

#Fashion #Males #Lexicographer
Lexicographers are language reporters.
-- Erin McKean

#Lexicographer #Language
Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.
-- Jessica Mitford

#Ambition #Chicago #Lexicographer

If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time.
Obviously, you can't operate a system at 100 percent capacity. You need room for growth. And because there are peak times, you need surge capacity. But it is easier to reduce and manage excess capacity in larger units than smaller, especially when you have a diversity of users who have different peak periods and different growth rates. That's why the utility model is intriguing.
I do conventions sometimes every other weekend. Whenever I have time, and it's not too far away. I get a lot of invitations (to appear at conventions) in other countries and I have to turn them down.
The march to our duty here, not merely to ourselves, but to our surroundings, must proceed. God wills it.
Do you wanna be really really awesome? Just keep watching me.
I don't hold on to fear as much as I used to, because I've learned a lot about genuinely not caring what strangers think about me. It's very liberating. It's very empowering, and I've learned a lot of that from Jay-Shawn Carter-Z, because his approach to life is very internal. It's a very good lesson to learn.
For watching death, and above all, after death; not death in battle, but death after battle, brings one to certain indifferences that are also a form of death.
I have a vision of a world where we don't continue down senseless paths, where we care for our fellow human as much as we care for ourselves. I believe the mere striving for such a world is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner and global security.
When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.
Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.