October 2005

Notable and Quotable

American lexicographer Noah Webster, born in 1758, and Irish writer Oscar Wilde, born in 1854, share an October 16 birthday. Webster tracked language but Wilde toyed with it. That may explain why Webster is quoted only three times in the Webster’s Third, while the witty Wilde appears 86 times. Here’s a small collection of some colorful Wilde words, and a few from Noah.

Remember, finding quotations from an author is easy. Just choose your reference—the Unabridged Dictionary or the Collegiate—and click on Advanced Search. Type the last name of the author in the Author Quoted box and click on Search.

From Noah Webster:

candor noun
“heavy accusation ... from a gentleman of your talents, liberality, and candor”

dispute verb
“the students disputed forensically this day a twofold question”

frown verb
“I will be neither frowned nor ridiculed into error”

From Oscar Wilde:

blackball verb
“he was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and social position fully entitled him to become a member”

contemptible adjective
“the one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection”

design verb
“a curious woman whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage”

dowdy adjective
“so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymnbook”

infamy noun
“I have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy”

inordinate adjective
inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of ideas”

lure verb
lured into the imperfect world of coarse uncompleted passion”

misery; sorrow nouns
“anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb”

obloquy noun
“those who stood by me in the teeth of obloquy, taunt and open sneer, or insult even”

Philistine noun
“it is only the Philistine who seeks to estimate a personality by the vulgar test of production”

plenitude noun
“loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude”

prying; shallow adjectives
“will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes”

quaff verb
“I quaffed a cocktail without flinching”

ravenous adjective
“mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them”

remorse noun
remorse that makes one walk on thorns”

visage noun
“withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage”