Top 77 Dictionary Quotes

The word ‘gratitude’ is not part of the Hollywood dictionary.

Language is ever on the move, and most days, I check out the ‘Urban Dictionary’ where anyone can invent a new and useful word or phrase.

I keep a big, fat dictionary with me while writing.

The character of our language defines us, and dictionaries say as much about us as about the way we speak.

I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

Facts are not science – as the dictionary is not literature.

Look up the definition of rejection in the dictionary, get really comfortable with it, and then maybe you can go into acting.

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact.

It’s one thing looking up your own book in a library, but imagine being able to look up your own word in the dictionary.

If you look up the definition of greatness in the dictionary, it will say Michael Jordan.

Wikipedia’s a collaborative experiment akin to Simon Winchester’s account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in ‘The Professor and the Madman,’ which outlines James Murray’s mission to produce the tome in the 19th century.

When you look at ‘policy wonk’ in the dictionary, the one picture you won’t see is Donald Trump.

Death is a word in the dictionary. I don’t believe in that word. I think the most appropriate word is ‘departure’ because we are energy and you can’t create or destroy energy, you can only change its form.

There is something like an explosion in the meaning of certain words: they have a greater value than their meaning in the dictionary.

Love is the most important thing in the world. Hate, we should remove from the dictionary.

I’m not a great reader, believe it or not. It’s not the vocabulary – my father made me read the dictionary when I was little – but my attention span is poor. Takes me months to read one book.

Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word ‘impossible’ is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‘humble,’ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

Speaking fluent English – like doing long division or successfully rewiring a 220-volt electrical outlet – is not a skill you’re born with. It’s something you learn, occasionally even by opening some old dictionary.

With free market and free man, if you remove one of them, it is not called capitalism in my dictionary.

For me there is no such word as ‘luck’ in the dictionary.

There’s no limitation on comics, nothing. From a logical standpoint, how can there be a limitation on comics? You can use any word in the dictionary. You can put them in any order you want to. You can use a vast variety of illustrating styles. People could do all sorts of things.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ reads like a collection of great Twitter posts. And as people do with tweets, they can swipe Bierce’s best lines and recite them as nearly their own. The reflected glory of reposting.

I’m a massive fan of the dictionary.

There is no such word as item girl in the dictionary. People have created this word and I don’t believe that I am an item girl.

Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.

My lad chewed and swallowed a dictionary. We gave him Epsom salts – but we can’t get a word out of him.

If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn’t what you watch on TV.

Next to the word ‘luvvie’ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of me. At least in the American editions.

I remember I told my mom that I was scared. I asked her, how will I talk to everyone in English? And my mom gave me a dictionary, where I learned one day at a time.

I’m not sure what to call ‘Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary.’ Nonfiction? Movie/toy fiction? But it is any Lego/’Star Wars’ kid’s dream. Call it spectacular.

My pet peeve and my goal in life is to somehow get an adjective for ‘integrity’ in the dictionary. ‘Truthful’ doesn’t really cover it, or ‘genuine.’ It should be like ‘integritus.’

It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word ‘pessimist’ was not in our vocabulary at that time. It’s a modern ‘invention’ which I believe we should ‘dis-invent.’

We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that ‘thousands’ has almost passed out of the dictionary.

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.

I used the dictionary very minimally and I just wrote how I speak. And I speak very hateful manner usually. I constantly did that because I think the fans would get more out of it if they understood exactly what I’m saying – exactly where I’m coming from.

If you read Bernard Hopkins’ name in the dictionary, the definition would be ‘discipline.’

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

Dictionary – opinion expressed as truth in alphabetical order.

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries eventually reflect popular choices. And the Internet is allowing more people to influence spelling than ever before.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up ‘vaudeville’ in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says ‘Milton Berle’ – and he made it just a tremendous party.

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Look up the word role in the dictionary and you’ll see it means playing a part. That’s why I call myself a real model.

There are very few good ways to get publicity for a dictionary.

I was watching the Nina Simone documentary alone in my room, and I said out loud to myself, ‘Why do we not know that this woman is beauty? She is beauty! Why did no one tell me this growing up? Why was her name not next to ‘beauty’ in the dictionary?’

Always remember that striving and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary.

A liberal to me is one who – and it suits some of the dictionary definitions – is unbeholden to any specific belief or party or group or person, but makes up his or her mind on the basis of the facts and the presentation of those facts at the time. That defines what I am.

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.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

Well, first of all, I’m an incredibly gullible person – I’m so bad that when I said that to someone, my friend said, ‘You know, ‘gullible’ isn’t even in the dictionary.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ As I was saying ‘Really?’ I will acknowledge that I then realized what was happening, but that’s how bad I am.

Many Arabic/Islamic words have now entered the English dictionary, such as haj, hijab, Eid, etc., and I no longer need to put them in italics or explain them.

I have had teachers who were brutal. If you look up ‘brutal’ in a dictionary, you will see their names. And I think that it’s under the guise of wanting to change the actor’s habit – wanting to break bad habits and replace them with brand-new ones you can use for the rest of your career.

My wife Lorrie actually looked in the dictionary to see what the definition was of heroism because it had been used so much. She found at least one definition is someone who chooses to put themselves at risk to save another.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

And let a scholar all earth’s volumes carry, he will be but a walking dictionary: a mere articulate clock.

I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.