Tough Vocabulary Quotes

Working as a white ally is tough, but certainly not impossible. Learning to listen is a virtue that whiteness has often avoided. I asked him to engage, to adopt the vocabulary of empathy, to develop fluidity in the dialect of hope and the language of racial understanding. It

The girls of the sixties had mothers who predicted, insisted, argued that those girls would be hurt; but they would not say how or why. In the main, the mothers appeared to be sexual conservatives: they upheld the marriage system as a social ideal and were silent about the sex in it. Sex was a duty inside marriage; a wife’s attitude toward it was irrelevant unless she made trouble, went crazy, fucked around. Mothers had to teach their daughters to like men as a class—be responsive to men as men, warm to men as men—and at the same time to not have sex. Since males mostly wanted the girls for sex, it was hard for the girls to understand how to like boys and men without also liking the sex boys and men wanted. The girls were told nice things about human sexuality and also told that it would cost them their lives—one way or another. The mothers walked a tough line: give the girls a good attitude, but discourage them. The cruelty of the ambivalence communicated itself, but the kindness in the intention did not: mothers tried to protect their daughters from many men by directing them toward one; mothers tried to protect their daughters by getting them to do what was necessary inside the male system without ever explaining why. They had no vocabulary for the why—why sex inside marriage was good but outside marriage was bad, why more than one man turned a girl from a loving woman into a whore, why leprosy or paralysis were states preferable to pregnancy outside marriage. They had epithets to hurl, but no other discourse. Silence about sex in marriage was also the only way to avoid revelations bound to terrify—revelations about the quality of the mothers’ own lives.

As far as Meryem was concerned, Greek baklava was Turkish baklava. And if the Syrians or Lebanese or Egyptians or Jordanians or any others lay claim to her beloved dessert, tough luck. It wasn’t theirs either. While the slightest change in her dietary vocabulary could rub her up the wrong way, it was the label Greek coffee that particularly boiled her blood. Which to her always was and always would be, Turkish coffee. By now, Ada had long discovered that her aunt was full of contradictions. Although she could be movingly respectful and empathetic towards other cultures and acutely aware of the dangers of cultural animosities, she automatically transformed into a kind of nationalist in the kitchen, a culinary patriot.

What do you paint?” Hans shrugged. “Nudes. Mostly men.” “Pornography?” “No,” Hans said defensively. “I think the naked male form is beautiful. Erotic, yes, but also sublime.” “I have a very good English vocabulary,” Boris said. “I write in English to avoid having my work mangled in translation. But I cannot remember that word.” “Sublime?” Hans asked. He had to think about it. That was a tough word to define, even for native English speakers. At last he said, “Perfect. So beautiful it’s like glimpsing the face of God.” Boris nodded. “I sometimes feel that when I am writing

The Viking invasions began as smash-and-grab raids to take as much as possible and go, but some groups decided to settle down and make a new life on the land they claimed. Their language was similar enough to Old English that they could communicate with the Anglo-Saxons without too much difficulty, and over time their own way of speaking mixed into the surrounding language, leaving vocabulary and expressions behind that don’t quite fit the rest of the pattern at the old Germanic layer. Much of the Scandinavian influence in English is so well absorbed that it doesn’t cause any weirdness. For example, there was a sequence in Germanic that became a ‘sk’ sound in Scandinavian and a ‘sh’ sound in English. When we mixed some Scandinavian words into English, we got some doubles like skirt and shirt, but we don’t even think of those as the same word, so the intrusion is unnoticeable.

After the conquest, English and French were divided by social class. The ruling elite spoke French and the lower classes spoke English. Eventually, French influence spread to English, but English remained a Germanic language in its basic structure and grammar and much of its most basic vocabulary. French was layered into it, mostly in vocabulary, but in a few other subtle ways. It wasn’t because the ruling class imposed the French language on the lower classes and forced them to speak it. It was because over time the ruling elite adopted English as their own language.

The vocabulary explosion is not the only thing we can blame the French for (see “A Sizeable, Substantial, Extensive Vocabulary”). It introduced new word stress patterns that created confusion and splits based on stress alone (see “Don’t InSULT Me with That INsult!”). It left behind old word forms and phrase ordering (see “Without Fail,” “Ask the Poets Laureate”). It even encouraged the development of a new English speech sound with its own letter, v (see “Of Unrequited Lof”).

In the centuries following the French rule of England, the English language spread back into all areas of life, common and official, in a new mixed form with a vocabulary full of words that had come from French but were completely Anglicized. Words like farm, city, village, fruit, and flower now belonged to both the nobility and the folk. But the language continued to expand under the influence of French and Latin as literacy and education spread and people adopted new words to indicate a similar elevated status or prestige.

Then came the French vocabulary onslaught. The earliest borrowings were quickly assimilated to the English way. French final-syllable stress became English first-syllable stress: monTAGNE-MOUNtain, jarDIN-GARden, forÊT-FORest, citÉ-CIty, monNAIE-MONey, jourNÉE-JOURney. But later borrowings often didn’t adjust (maCHINE, diVORCE, balLOON). They kept their French ways but still became fully English words. (French stress rules are more complicated than “final-syllable stress,” but to the English ear words appear final stressed.)

machismo. The mentality to never show weakness, grind it out, play through the pain. Our vocabulary is telling. We tell our sons and daughters to “man up” or, in much cruder terms that are heard on playing fields across the country, “stop being a pussy.” Or as the famous line from the movie A League of Their Own summarized expectations in sport, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Masculinity is so ingrained in our concept of toughness that if you ask a sampling of individuals about

Using second or third person creates distance between the experience and our emotional response. This linguistic trick allows us to zoom out. When we can create space and broaden our worldview, we slow the path from emotional reaction to inner battle to action. By creating space with a simple change in our vocabulary, we regain control instead of defaulting toward the easy decision.

Like other physicists, Feigenbaum used an understated, tough-guy vocabulary to rate such problems. Such a thing is obvious, he might say, meaning that a result could be understood by any skilled physicist after appropriate contemplation and calculation. Not obvious described work that commanded respect and Nobel prizes. For the hardest problems, the problems that would not give way without long looks into the universe’s bowels, physicists reserved words like deep.

Another reason that shame is so difficult to talk about is vocabulary. We often use the terms embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, and shame interchangeably, when in reality these experiences are very different in terms of biology, biography, behavior, and self-talk, and they lead to radically different outcomes.

A Scrabble Word Finder is a tool that helps players find possible words using the letters they have. It is useful for improving gameplay, discovering high-scoring words, and learning new vocabulary. How It Works: Enter Letters – Input the letters you have, including blanks. Generate Words – The tool finds all possible word combinations. Sort by Points – Words are sorted based on Scrabble tile values. Use Strategy – Find the best word to maximize your score! Benefits of Using a Scrabble Word Finder: ✅ Helps in tough situations with difficult letter combinations ✅ Improves vocabulary and word knowledge ✅ Increases chances of winning against opponents Do you use a Scrabble Word Finder? Let’s discuss the best tools and strategies!