One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ‘weasel words’. Theodore Roosevelt
O! many a shaft, at random sent,
Finds mark the archer little meant!
And many a word, at random spoken,
May soothe or wound a heart that’s broken. Walter Scott, The Lord of the Isles
I like good strong words that mean something. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. Ernest Hemingway
She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells. Dean Koontz, Lightning
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think. Lord Byron
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. John F Kennedy
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. Edgar Allan Poe
I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action. Mae West
Of every four words I write, I strike out three. Nicolas Boileau
It is splendid to be a great writer, and to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts. Gustave Flaubert, 1821-80
Throughout the world, if it were sought,
Fair words enough a man shall find.
They be good cheap; they cost right naught;
Their substance is but only wind.
But well to say and so to mean –
That sweet accord is seldom seen. Thomas Wyatt, 1557
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen iambics, but mild anagram:
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in Acrostic Land.
There thou mayest wings display and alters raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. John Dryden, 1631-1700, MacFlecknoe
The beastly adverb – far more damaging to a writer than an adjective. Graham Greene, Ways of Escape, 1980
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. John Ruskin, A Joy for Ever, 1857
Writers take words seriously – perhaps the last professional class that does. John Updike
The whole business of swearing, essentially England swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is as irrational as magic – indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound … When a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its meaning. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you think of an everyday English equivalent. George Orwell
It’s a beautiful thing the construction of words. 1984 1984 starring John Hurt & Richard Burton & Suzanna Hamilton & Cyril Cusack & Gregor Fisher & James Waker & Andrew Wilde & Corina Seddon & Rupert Baderman & John Boswall et al, director Michael Radford, brother to Winston at table
The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. ibid. Winston to brother
‘The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,’ he said. ‘We’re getting the language into its final shape – the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050. George Orwell, 1984
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viola or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
If Glenn Hoddle said one word to his team at half-time, it was concentration and focus. Ron Atkinson, football commentary
I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’ A A Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
It’s time to play Cheap Word Game. Spitting Image s12e2, TV game show, ITV 1992
Don’t. Words don’t work. Peaky Blinders s4e6, Polly to Michael on death of Arthur, BBC 2017
She’s having to get to grips with around 30,000 words. Babies: Their Wonderful World III: Becoming Independent, BBC 2018
Babies prefer to listen to parentese … Parentese exaggerates the rhythm of words. ibid.
According to Jonathon Green [slang], the incomparable scholar of the language which fell off the back of a lorry, ‘Slang is the poetry of the gutter, is the poetry of the disenfranchised, the poetry of the have-nots.’ Jonathan Meades on Jargon: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know ***** BBC 2019
Gore Vidal described irony as ‘the weapon of the impotent.’ ibid.
The real satisfaction is to be had in the creation of texts, of slang which will be deemed offensive and of satire. Satire need not be funny but it must be mordant, vicious, aggressive and hurtful. ibid.
Slang is the expression of what we think rather than what we are enjoined to think. ibid.
Slang is the most sour poetry, it is not wishy-well, it’s demotic, it’s the spoken and very occasionally written invention of the tap-room, the bar-room, the workplace, the barracks, the private place. ibid.
Slang is about showing off, about increasing one’ idiolect … It’s an expression of verbal dexterity … The pleasure of slang is in the making. ibid.
Trump: His proudly proclaimed racism and misogyny, his cosmic ignorance, his chilling nationalism, his blatant nepotism, his tax paying, his bullying, sheer nastiness, his complete lack of generosity, his success in turning America into a pariah state, he has launched on an undeserving world a leatherette-faced consigliere called Kelly Ann. ibid.
‘Anyone who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially and emotionally insecurity, or criminally motivated, or mad.’ ibid. Auberon Waugh
Don’t they [politicians] realise how tired, how clapped out their paltry jargon is? It’s the language of people who can’t think for themselves, and arrogantly believe that the rest of the populace shares their infirmity. We don’t. These people are programmed morons, their threadbare formulae are more than just pockmarks, they’re seething buboes signalling an absolute contempt for the populace whom they regard as gullible patsies to be patronisingly talked down to. They signal too a contempt for the language of the country they are meant to be governing. They signal their own poverty of thought. Are they brainwashed? They are certainly tongue-washed. ibid.
Jargon is the language of the trained liar, the professionally mendacious, the dishonest trainee who learns from his masters … That very clarity is of course the problem. ibid.