vocabulary

OK, so the guy is cool, but... I mean own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is... this is... total vocabulary failure!

How many words are you having trouble with, sir?""Just the ones that I've highlighted.""I count at least a dozen, and I haven't gotten out of the first paragraph.""That's as far as I got, too. I'm not sure you and I speak the same language.

Spy' is such a short ugly word. I prefer 'espionage.' Those extra three syllables really say something.

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. _ Owen Barfield

Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.

Sound is the vocabulary of nature.

Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.

Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.

Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf.

Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.

Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist.

We__e sick of hearing people say, __hat band is so gay,_ or __hose guys are fags._ Gay is not a synonym for shitty. If you wanna say something__ shitty, say it__ shitty. Stop being such homophobic assholes.

She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory.