2,489 Quotes About Language

Don’t forget that one interpretation never exhausts the sign, that polysemy is a bottomless well where we can hear an infinite number of echoes: a word’s meaning never runs dry.

Sometimes language can't even read the music of meaning.

With regard to metaphor, it is certain, that in all languages there are many words which at first had one sense only, and afterwards acquired another by metaphorical application, of which words both senses are now become so current, that it would be difficult for any but an etymologist to determine which is the original and which the metaphorical.

It may be further remarked, that in some words the metaphorical sense hath justled out the original sense altogether, so that in respect of it they are become obsolete. Of this kind in our tongue are the verbs to train, to curb, to edify, to enhance, the primitive significations whereof were to draw, to bend, to build, to lift.

…in whatever light they [figurative words that have become literal] may be considered by the grammarian and the lexicographer, they cannot be considered as genuine metaphors by the rhetorician. I have already assigned the reason. They have nothing of the effect of metaphor upon the hearer. On the contrary, like proper terms, they suggest directly to his mind, without the intervention of any image, the ideas which the speaker proposed to convey by them.

...if we critically examine any language, ancient or modern, and trace its several terms and phrases to their source, we shall find it hold invariably, that all the words made use of, to denote spiritual and intellectual things, are in their origin metaphors, taken from the objects of sense.

...all humans are given the same set of primary-metaphor building blocks, but different language and cultural groups put the blocks together in different ways. Some individuals even force the blocks together in ways that don’t fit – which is the major reason we get mixed metaphors.

Light means knowledge in the Greek language it can also be translated as illumination, knowledge, insight, understanding and wisdom

They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood.