Lists of Words Having Different Meanings in American and British English

Famous quotes containing the words lists of, lists, words, meanings, american, british and/or english:

“Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)

“Behold then Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the Rhine or the Coloseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the shells.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)

“Plantin’ and readin’, plantin’ and readin’. Fill a man full of lead, stick ‘em in the ground, and then read words on ‘em. Why when ya killed a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job.”
—Borden Chase [Frank Fowler] (1900–1971)

“An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.”
—Charlton Laird (b. 1901)

“European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition—of intellectual activity, of letters—and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)

“That the public can grow accustomed to any face is proved by the increasing prevalence of Keith’s ruined physiognomy on TV documentaries and chat shows, as familiar and homely a horror as Grandpa in The Munsters.”
—Philip Norman, British author, journalist. The Life and Good Times of the Rolling Stones, introduction (1989)

“On becoming soldiers we have not ceased to be citizens.”
—Oliver Cromwell’s Soldiers. Address, 1647, to the English Parliament. “Humble Representation.”