Swahili Dictionary Quotes

I have written all the 406 pages of my book in Swahili words. Even the countries are in Swahili. Instead of 'Nigeria', for example, I have written 'Nijeria'. That is how it is written in the Swahili dictionary. This can seem as a minor detail and that people may find my mission close to ridiculous! However, single letters and commas matter. ~ Enock Maregesi

This is cunnilingus you're describing, right?"
"Good lord, where did you find that word?"
"I saw it in the dictionary."
"Are we perusing the dictionary for profane words now?"
"I wanted to know how to pronounce it properly. The accent is on the third syllable."
" Ah, good to know. Because that word is always likely to come up in casual conversation. ~ Kathy Cecala

There was no word for self-pity in the language of the north-east of Scotland - the nearest being a word which is defined in the Scots dictionary as being 'a term used to express self-reproach on paying too much for something. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes Now that I can hear all your poison prose Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy There are no words for me inside your dictionary ~ Andy Partridge

Did you just use juxtaposition in a sentence?"
"Yes, Sage" he said patiently. "We use it all the time with art, ... That, and I know how to use a dictionary ~ Richelle Mead

Sorry is not meant that you are wrong but is meant that you value the relationship."But in my dictionary "Sorry is too late", I rarely use this word! ~ Chum Visal

Many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for 'That One.' And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for president. ~ Barack Obama

For me there is no such word as 'luck' in the dictionary. ~ Fabrice Muamba

You're like a dictionary. You know the word is in there, but you need to know how to spell what you want first ~ Aaron Withers

The high-minded definition of politics is: 'the art or science of government; the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy.' It is only when you keep reading in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary that you get closer to the truth: 'political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices'. ~ Cal Thomas

Infallibility: The position that the Bible cannot err or make mistakes, and that it "is completely trustworthy as a guide to salvation and the life of faith and will not fail to accomplish its purpose" (Westminster Dictionary). As the Christian church has traditionally taught, this doctrine is based on the perfection of the divine author, who cannot speak error. ~ Anonymous

There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with. ~ Refaat Alareer

Nephilim, meaning giants, the Hebrew word left untranslated by the Revisers. The Revisers have , however, translated the Hebrew gibborim, in gen. 6:4, "Mighty Men"

Were the Nephilim fallen angels? ~ Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary

Music is a language, and it's like a dictionary that has a lot of words, but if you limited yourself to a couple of definitions you would be illiterate. If one limits oneself to a peculiar definition like 'new music,' 'avant-garde,' or something like that, I think it's like cutting out half the dictionary. ~ Archie Shepp

We're so special, when you look in the dictionary under short bus, there's a group picture of us,' Stevie Rae said, sounding weak but definately alive. ~ Kristin Cast

I go downstairs and the books blink at me from the shelves. Or stare. In a trick of the light, a row of them seems to shift very slightly, like a curtain blown by the breeze through an open window. Red is next to blue is next to cream is adjacent to beige. But when I look again, cream is next to green is next to black. A tall book shelters a small book, a huge Folio bullies a cowering line of Quartos. A child's nursery rhyme book does not have the language in which to speak to a Latin dictionary. Chaucer does not know the words in which Henry James communicates but here they are forced to live together, forever speechless. ~ Susan Hill

The problem with the alphabet is that it bears no relation to anything at all, and when words are arranged alphabetically they are uselessly separated. In the OED, for example, aardvarks are 19 volumes away from the zoo, yachts are 18 volumes from the beach, and wine is 17 volumes from the nearest corkscrew. ~ Mark Forsyth

I used the dictionary very minimally and I just wrote how I speak. And I speak very hateful manner usually. I constantly did that because I think the fans would get more out of it if they understood exactly what I'm saying - exactly where I'm coming from. ~ Kerry King

Belittle, v.
No, I don't listen to the weather in the morning. No, I don't keep track of what I spend. No, it hadn't occurred to me that the Q train would have been much faster. But every time you give me that look, it doesn't make me want to live up to your standards. ~ David Levithan

People there were so kind. There's a lovely word in Swahili: nishauri. It means "advise me. When someone was mad at you, they would come to your house and sit down and talk and say, This is very disrespectful and I think we should consult each other on how to move forward. Let's make peace here and come to a conclusion that is beautiful. ~ Clemantine Wamariya

But no matter what the dictionary says, in my opinion, a problem derails your life and an inconvenience is not being able to get a nice seat on the un-derailed train. Given that, I've had three and a half problems. A dead guy in my bed, substance abuse, and manic-depression. ~ Carrie Fisher

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha ~ Thomas Jefferson

The word precipice does not exist in the dictionary of birds! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
(on Ernest Hemingway ~ William Faulkner

Pal, if you ever look up the word right in a dictionary, you'll find it's one of the oldest words in the English language. Even so, people have never stopped arguing about what it means. I suspect they always will. ~ Avi

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate. I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone, and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Since you cannot always carry and display your diploma. Kindly act like you have one. Professionalism. Include that to your dictionary. ~ Joshua De Vera Bautista

IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary. ~ Ambrose Bierce

And you approve of your future sister-in-law?" Cade asked.

"Sure. Isabelle seems great." Her sister, on the other hand . . .

Huxley studied him as he slid on his boxer briefs. "What's the 'but'?"

"No 'but,'" Vaughn said. "I like Simon's fiancée." And, fortunately for him, she inherited all the good-natured genes in the family.

Cade furrowed his brow. "There it is again - that look. Like you want to say more."

Vaughn scoffed at that as he pulled on his clothes. "There's no look."

Cade pointed. "Huxley just put on his underwear. Not once, in the two years that you two have been partners, have you ever missed an opportunity to smirk at the fact that the man irons his boxer briefs."

"Hey. They fold neater that way. It saves space in the drawer," Huxley said.

Cade gave Vaughn a look. I rest my case. "So? What gives?"

Vaughn took in the tenacious expression on his friend's face and knew that any further denials would only bring on more questions. He sighed. "Fine." He thought about where to begin. "Isabelle has a sister."

Huxley rolled his eyes. "Here we go."

"No, no. Not here we go. She and I are not going anywhere," Vaughn said emphatically. "The woman's a . . ." He paused, trying to think of the right word. He caught sight of another agent, Sam Wilkins, passing by their row of lockers. The man was a walking dictionary. "Hey, Wilkins - what's that word you used ~ Julie James

My favourite book is my dictionary. It excites me. Each time I open it, the endless possibilities come tumbling out. It's Alice falling into Wonderland. It's an artist's paint box. It's a new day. ~ Stephen Moore

Life is a thick dictionary, where you can find the meaning of anything. ~ Gwenth

My head was spinning. I could think of nothing better to calm it down than the Oxford English Dictionary. ~ Alan Bradley

Gratitude is a fool's word; we find it in the dictionary, but it is not in the heart of man. ~ Honore De Balzac

When I see a dictionary on my desk I feel like I'm looking at some strange dog leaving a twisty piece of poop on our lawn out back. ~ Haruki Murakami

If I am hated at Barcelona, it is their problem but not mine. Fear is not a word in my football dictionary. ~ Jose Mourinho

(...) this first-approximation reification of language very easily passes over unnoticed into a harder idealization, especially in everyday parlance. It is this idealization that, for instance, leads people to say that "the language" is degenerating because teenagers don't know how to talk anymore (they were saying that in the eighteenth century too!). It is also behind seeing the dictionary as an authority on the "correct meanings" of words rather than as an attempt to record how words are understood in the speech community. Even linguists adopt this stance all the time in everyday life (especially as teachers of students who can't write a decent paragraph). But once we go inside the heads of speakers to study their own individual cognitive structure, the stance must be dropped. ~ Ray S. Jackendoff

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
[Reviewing A Feminist Dictionary by Cheris Kramarae and Paula A Treichler in New Directions for Women (1986)] ~ Marie Shear

That right there, what just happened, is called attraction. A-trak-shee-un. Look it up in the dictionary. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce ... in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. ~ Neel Burton