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Lexicographer Quotes

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Lexicographer Quotes

“ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.”

MenMatterHellStandardsIndependentStriveAverageConformAbnormalResemblanceAverage ManNormal And AbnormalLexicographer
Book:The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
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“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.”

IfsFirstsUseUsedLanguageGrowsInnovationFollowingRecognizingDictionaryUnfamiliarDiscerningNew WordsLexicographer
Book:The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
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“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.”

IfsFirstsWellsUsedHavensAmbitionGuiltyFollyChicagoUps & DownsFebruaryUndertakerLexicographerMorticians
Book:THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH
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“Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.”

FirstsLastsNamesReadyDuesDefinedPatriotismEnlightenedAmbitiousSubmitInferiorsDrsResortsDictionaryJohnsonRubbishTorchesScoundrelsLexicographerDr Johnson
Book:The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
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“You can define a net two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally you would say it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string.”

WayTwoTogetherViewsLogicInstrumentsFishesPoint Of ViewHolesCollectionsInjuryStringsTiedReverseTwo WaysLexicographer
Book:Flaubert's Parrot
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“Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support ... The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem.”

ArtSciencePerfectSupportMovementPoetEncouragementStructurePracticalsChecksHistorianConstructionMathematicianSailorTravellerAstronomersChemistGeologistExact SciencesSupport And EncouragementLexicographer
Book:Poems
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“If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of the national body and fill it with life.”

PeopleIfsLifeHeartMayBodyNamesWishBloodDutyCreatingBoundsIsraelStreamsOrganismsFillingIsraeliNationalityHebrewStreamingArteriesNational UnityLexicographer
Author:Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
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