Quotes & Sayings About Synonyms

Surrendering, letting go of possessiveness, and complete nonattachment-all are synonyms for accumulating merit. — Pema Chodron

Even English Language doesn't provide you with the Synonyms of the word Success. — Kshitij Shringi

Like all numinous contents, they have a tendency to self-amplification, that is to say they form the nuclei for an aggregation of synonyms. These — C. G. Jung

Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the synonyms of the word Black. It's always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word White, it's always something pure, high and clean. Well I want to get the language right tonight. I want to get the language so right that everyone here will cry out: 'Yes, I'm Black, I'm proud of it. I'm Black and I'm beautiful!' — Martin Luther King Jr.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist. — Henry Adams

I hate the term 'black' because it doesn't bring to life who we are as a people. The term 'black' has more negative synonyms than the term white. — Isaiah Washington

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis
obviously an unproven one
that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms. — Jorge Luis Borges

When you find yourself in philosophical difficulties, the first line of defense is not to define your problematic terms, but to see whether you can think without using those terms at all. Or any of their short synonyms. And be careful not to let yourself invent a new word to use instead. Describe outward observables and interior mechanisms; don't use a single handle, whatever that handle may be. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Nothing holds back human progress as frequently as the misbelief that the words 'impossible' and 'improbable' are synonyms. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe. — Anne Rice

Jesper, you're tall, brown, and conspicuous-"

"All synonyms for delightful. — Leigh Bardugo

Many novice writers try to avoid using 'said' by substituting synonyms: 'he uttered,' 'she murmured,' 'he questioned.' It's true that any word repeated too often becomes monotonous, but substitutions for 'said' can be worse than its repetition. — Nancy Kress

For a dreamer, pain and pleasure are synonyms. — Manoj Arora

New synonyms for sex: Going to a family function, getting the hard part over with, anti-fillet. Get it? Sex! — Dana Gould

A gay lobbyist is a resident of San Francisco who equates Greek pederasty with consented male-on-male only pedophilia, invokes pederasty to justify his bizarre behavior, and then denies that pedophilia and homosexuality are synonyms. — Bill Gaede

You're impossible," I growl, and rip open the book. Theron laughs and scoots a little closer to me. "Impossible, endearing. Synonyms, really. — Sara Raasch

A teacher of mine once said there are no true synonyms. — Roy Peter Clark

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words "TRAITOR & TREASON."
Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason! — Hank Bracker

You can be critical and not judgmental. The two are synonyms, but no the same. The critical man analyzes people, things, and issues, very carefully. The judgmental man presents the results of his careful analysis in a manner that condemns. — Kingsley C. Okei

We are synonyms but not the same. — Tahereh Mafi

At heart, "uncertainty" and "investing" are synonyms. — Benjamin Graham

Vengence, betrayal, and love they all are synonyms for the same word: fake. — TBBishiXO

Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto. — P.G. Wodehouse

Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. — Tahereh Mafi

The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power. — Edmund Burke

Sadness and grief aren't the same thing. It's why they have different words. Maybe it's a subtle distinction, but we don't keep a word in a language if it doesn't still have a purpose of its own. Synonyms are never exact things. — Dot Hutchison

I'm running out of things to say.
I've stopped stealing pages out of poetry books, but last week I pocketed a thesaurus and looked for synonyms for you and could only find rain
and more rain
and a thunderstorm that sounded like glass, like crystal, an orchestra. — Shinji Moon

It is understandable how this shame came into being. The nation made the black man's color a stigma. Even linguistics and semantics conspire to give this impression. If you look in Roget's Thesaurus you will find about 120 synonyms for blacK, and right down the line you will find words like smut, something dirty, worthless, and useless, and then you look further and you find about 120 synonyms for white and they all represent something high, noble, pure, chaste - right down the line. In our language structure, a white lie is a little better than a black lie. Somebody goes wrong in the family and we don't call him a white sheep, we call him a black sheep. We don't say whitemail, but blackmail. We don't speak of white-balling somebody, but black-balling somebody. The word 'black' itself in our society connotes something that is degrading. It was absolutely necessary to come to a moment with a sense of dignity. It is very positive and very necessary. — Martin Luther King Jr.

You have tens, hundreds of thousands of people in government, and just as many among contractors, who feel totally comfortable writing at the top of the document "internal use only," "official use only," and a million other synonyms, all of which amount to "none of your business" to the public. — Ted Gup

contextualization is inevitable. As soon as you choose a language to speak in and particular words to use within that language, the culture-laden nature of words comes into play. We often think that translating words from one language to another is simple - it's just a matter of locating the synonym in the other language. But there are few true synonyms. The word God is translated into German as Gott - simple enough. But the cultural history of German speakers is such that the word Gott strikes German ears differently than the English word God strikes the ears of English speakers. It means something different to them. You may need to do more explanation if you are to give German speakers the same biblical concept of God that the word conveys to English speakers. — Timothy J. Keller

She grinned. "This is the fun part."
She didn't even look, but a moment before the demon hit, massive wings snapped out of her back with lightning speed and a thundercrack, smacking the demon and flicking it over the rooftops like it was a ... gnat.
Okay, so the thesaurus in my head wasn't cranking out the synonyms because I was too busy gawking at the enormous white wings checkered with several feathers the same brilliant blue as her hair and shirt. They fluttered with a whispering grace, sending a soft breeze to cool my sweaty skin.
I blinked when she snapped her fingers in my face.
"Did you hear anything I just said?"
"You have wings?"
She sighed. Her shoulders and wings slumped. "I need you to focus, dear, so listen up. You must stick close to the Hex Boys. They'll protect you whilst - "
"Where did the wings come from? — A&E Kirk

Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking. — Frank Herbert

Patriotism is the surefire wingnut that binds our diverse society. Rulers historically used patriotism to manipulate the populous. Patriotism serves as the trump card to justify going to war and mandatory inscription of young men into military service. Patriotism is becoming synonyms with state justified coercion and murder of less powerful people. — Kilroy J. Oldster

But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative
useless synonyms for good or for bad. — C.S. Lewis

I was surfing the Internet for a different sort of education. I surfed for photos of circus freaks and synonyms for the word intercourse and for answers to why staring at the stars in the evening tore my heart with longing. — Maggie Stiefvater

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

There are no such things as synonyms!" he practically shouted. "Deluge is not the same as flood. — Tom Robbins

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse. — Woody Allen

Once we have our atium, we'll be happy."
"Not to mention rich," Ham added.
"The two words are synonyms, Hammond," Breeze said. — Brandon Sanderson

People do complain about the way I act on stage ... They think on stage I act too arrogant, too self-obsessed, solecistic, self-contained, synonyms. — Bo Burnham

Here's the point to be made - there are no synonyms. There are no two words that mean exactly the same thing. — Theodore Sturgeon

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. It's a beautiful thing the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms there are also the antonyms. — George Orwell

Careful writers and discerning readers delight in the profusion of words in the English lexicon, no two of which are exact synonyms. Many words convey subtle shades of meaning, — Steven Pinker

English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. "Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist" [The Miracle of Language, page 54]. — Bill Bryson

Everything one used to take for granted, with so much certainty that one never even bothered to enquire about it, now turns out to be illusion. Your certainties are proven lies. And what happens if you start probing? Must you learn a wholly new language first?
'Humanity'. Normally one uses it as a synonym for compassion; charity; decency; integrity. 'He is such a human person.' Must one now go in search of an entirely different set of synonyms: cruelty; exploitation; unscrupulousness; or whatever? — Andre Brink

Fun and killing ain't synonyms to regular folks, Zeus."

. — Shay Rucker

It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought. A — George Orwell

Restaurant critics all struggle with the difficulty of writing about eating without resorting to the word 'delicious' and its synonyms. — Bee Wilson

Our normal is so subnormal that normal seems radical. To the first-century disciples, normal and radical were synonyms. We've turned them into antonyms. — Mark Batterson

I believe a person who strives to keep a great attitude is refusing a life of mediocrity. God isn't calling you to a life of mediocrity. Think of what the word mediocre means. The dictionary defines mediocre as "of only moderate quality; not very good." Synonyms for the word mediocre are words such as average, undistinguished, unexceptional, lackluster, and forgettable. Do these words describe how you want your life to be remembered? I seriously doubt they do. You want your life to be remembered as inspiring and exceptional. If you seek God's direction and plan for your life, he will lead and empower you to reach your full potential and inspire others. — Mark R. Lile

In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell ... we can't dance synonyms. — George Balanchine

If you write a blog post, you've got something to say; you're not just creating words and synonyms. We'd like the computers to actually pick up on that semantic meaning. — Ray Kurzweil

I feel so fortunate to be one of the lucky ones who is so grateful and appreciative to know such great synonyms for thankful. — Demetri Martin

We are synonyms but not the same.
Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.
They are not the same. — Tahereh Mafi

I tried to find a word for it in my thesaurus, but there isn't one. At least, not one that doesn't belittle the plight of POWs and victims of famine. I guess we can just call it beyond suck. -Lulu Dark — Bennett Madison

Fairyland ... Paradise ... In this place and at this time, Marguerite could know that the one was a parable of the other and both were synonyms for something that had no name. — Elizabeth Goudge

Last week I pocketed a thesaurus and looked for synonyms for you but could only find rain and more rain and a thunderstorm that sounded like glass, like crystal, like an orchestra. — Shinji Moon

Many Christians in the evangelical tradition use words like "conversion," "regeneration," "justification," "born-again," etc. all as more or less synonyms to mean "becoming a Christian from cold." In the classic Reformed tradition, the word "justification" is much more fine-tuned than that and has to do with a verdict which is pronounced, rather than with something happening to you in terms of actually being born again. So that I'm actually much closer to some classic Reformed writing on this than some people perhaps realize. — N. T. Wright