#semantics

When someone writes to tell me something I've written made them laugh or cry, I've done my job and done it well. The rest is all semantics. ↗

— Len Wein

#done #i #job #laugh #made

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on? ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#semantics #suspicion #humor

If we're for one another, we're feminists. The rest is semantics. ↗

— Betty Buckley

#feminists #rest #semantics

Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels. ↗

— Willard Van Orman Quine

#exhibits #labels #languages #meanings #museum

He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#chocolate #chocolate-cake #connotations #food #french

Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it? Ford: We're safe. Arthur: Oh good. Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet. Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#semantics #humor

Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language. ↗

— Roman Jakobson

#central #even #language #made #meaning

...and often Lisa thought bitterly of the ideas she had held on "college life" before coming to Denton, ideas and images culled from a hundred magazine stories and as many movies. Where were the convertibles, the secret bottles of liquor, the gay young men and their wild girl friends? ↗

— Grace Metalious

#semantics #unintentional-humor #men

I think that, on the reconciliation issue, if they had the votes, we wouldn't have had the summit. And if they try to go through reconciliation, it will be a change in semantics. Instead of the American people saying 'stop the bill' or 'kill the bill,' it's all going to be about repealing the bill. That's not the kind of discussion that they want. ↗

— Marsha Blackburn

#american #american people #bill #change #discussion

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them. ↗

— Felix Frankfurter

#constitution #depends #everything #laws #life