People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Collect and read dictionaries. Take a couple of minutes every day to read a page. Highlight fun words you didn't know before… — Douglas Wilson Copy Share Image
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
My desk is like a 'U,' so I have my computer and lots of dictionaries because I write in Spanish and I… — Isabel Allende Copy Share Image
“Dictionary, n. A malevolent literacy device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.” — Ambrose Bierce Copy Share Image
“Wake up to think of words… want to walk through pages of meanings, the links in assonance, alliteration, or just simple sense… — Initially NO Copy Share Image
Alphabetical order had to be invented to help people organize the first dictionaries. On the other hand, we may have reached a… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Dictionaries are like vitamins and floss; we buy them and then never use them. Even I, an English teacher, a lover of… — Jenny Baranick Copy Share Image
I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a… — William Stafford Copy Share Image
“Tugs used to think that everyone's name was in the dictionary, and when she had realized it was only hers, both Tugs… — Anne Ylvisaker Copy Share Image
“And Rose knows that dictionaries will never be the same again. Dictionaries will be forever imbued, sanctified, significant, suggestive. They will not… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“Every dictionary contains a world. I open a book of thieves’ slang from Queen Anne’s reign and they have a hundred words… — Mark Forsyth Copy Share Image
“Telephone books are, like dictionaries, already out of date the moment they are printed…” — Ammon Shea Copy Share Image
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
“The trouble with dictionaries is, they tell you more about words than you want to know without answering the question you have.” — Andy Rooney Copy Share Image
The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries. — Voltaire Copy Share Image
I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms. — Ben Schott Copy Share Image
I think when dictionaries define words, there's a sort of hair-splitting that to most people doesn't make any sense, which is we're… — Kory Stamper Copy Share Image
“In this case, consulting the dictionary would simply mean discovering what one already knew, Dictionaries only provide information that is likely to… — Jose Saramago Copy Share Image
Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
My Vocabularies vary, its so exclusionary You'll find my baby pictures in modern dictionaries Next to mighty mercenaries, and visual visionaries — Andre Nickatina Copy Share Image
One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share Image
Basic dictionaries no longer belong on paper; the greatest, the 'Oxford English Dictionary,' has nimbly remade itself in cyberspace, where it has… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Dictionaries are well respected, and they’re immune to market fluctuations. Isn’t there anyone with the balls to aim high and think long-term?… — Shion Miura Copy Share Image
I spoke Spanish when I was three, and then Maltese. I love dictionaries. I like foreigners. My dad moved every year before… — John Lloyd Copy Share Image
“Most lexicographers had no clue that such a career path existed until they were smack in the middle of it. Neil Serven,… — kory stamper Copy Share Image
The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous.… — Benjamin Tucker Copy Share Image
“About 35-40% of the time, a player wants to create a word ending in a specific letter. This, however, is not the… — Richard D. Ekstrom Copy Share Image
“FV: Annandale defines 'definition' as "an explanation of the signification of a term." Yet Oxford, on the other hand, defines it as… — Mort W. Lumsden Copy Share Image
