Vocabulary Quotes - Page 2

Most adults have a vocabulary of around 60,000 words, meaning that children must learn 10 to 20 words a day between the ages of eight months and 18 years. And yet the most frequent 100 words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4000 words account for 98% of conversation.

To enjoy and learn from what you read you must understand the meanings of the words a writer uses. You do yourself a grave disservice if you read around words you don’t know, or worse, merely guess at what they mean without bothering to look them up.For me, reading has always been not only a quest for pleasure and enlightenment but also a word-hunting expedition, a lexical safari.

Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf.

How many words are you having trouble with, sir?""Just the ones that I've highlighted.""I count at least a dozen, and I haven't gotten out of the first paragraph.""That's as far as I got, too. I'm not sure you and I speak the same language.

Right!""Right!""You can get there!""I can get there!""You're a natural at counting to two!""I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!""If you can count to two, you can count to anything!""If I can count to two, I can count to anything!""And then the world is your mollusc!""My mollusc! What's a mollusc?

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.