Quotes / You Keep Using That Word

Jason: I'll have you know in a head-to-head matchup, the jPad would literally smash the iPad.
Andy: You misused the word "literally".
Jason: Did I?
Andy: Why is there a rock taped to the back?

—Foxtrot

"'Real' has very little meaning in food. You can say a cat food has REAL chicken flavor because your cat doesn't know how to call you liar and cat owners are so used to puns that they can't spot horrible violations of language. But sometimes 'real' on a food implies actual legal classification and not that one or more ingredients were replaced with quick-dry cement.

For example, on a box of Chips Ahoy!, the words 'REAL CHOCOLATE Chip Cookies' appears next to a worried cookie with a face that says he wasn't ready to deal with the existential burden of finding out there was a debate about whether or not he was real."

—Seanbaby, "6 Words Advertisers Love (That Don't Mean a Damn Thing)"

"Some words I simply despair of ever hearing people use correctly. I just shrug when an airline pilot announces we're flying over the 'Sierra Nevada Mountains.' In the winter, if you're lucky, he may even say you're flying over the 'snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains' (get a Spanish dictionary). So if you want to use 'prodigal' to mean 'wandering' instead of 'wasteful,' I can’t stop you. Have your steak 'with au jus,' and go ahead and have a slice of pie 'with a la mode' while you’re at it, and a cup of coffee 'with au lait.' Have a side order of chili 'with con carne' if you're really hungry. If you think 'apropos' means 'appropriate,' go right ahead. If you want to take a hike in the woods and 'orientate' yourself on a map, knock yourself out. Ilitterissy roolz!"

—Steven Dutch, What's an Agnostic?

Dee: Are you goddamn kidding me?
Charlie: What?
Dee: Tiny boy, baby boy, little boy?
Charlie: Yes?
Dee: You're wanting me to say that I wanna make love to a little baby tiny boy.
Charlie: But I've explained this to you Dee that I'm talking about the spirit of this man. It's like a little boy, it's a metaphor.
Dee: You keep using that word, but I'm not convinced you know what it means.

—It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Nightman Cometh

Why do people call everything a Deus ex Machina without knowing what a deus ex machina actually is?

—Chuggaaconroy

"The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'"

— George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language", 1946

"I am an Urus, Tur to the Poles, Aurox to the Germans. The ignorant call me a Bison." "I am a Bison, Suber to the Poles, Bisont to the Germans. The ignorant call me an Urus."

— Sigismund von Herberstein, 1556

Avon: I use the word deliberately.

Tarrant: But did you use it accurately?

— Blake's 7, "Games"

Peter Parker: Spider-Man wasn't trying to attack the city, he was trying to save it. That's slander.
J. Jonah Jameson: It is not! I resent that! (Beat) Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.

—Spider-Man

"Just being violent is not ludonarrative dissonance; not when the story and world themselves are supposed to be fucking violent. You may not care for violence, but its mere presence in a game is not evidence of dissonance, and you'd sound way smarter just saying you don't like it rather than dressing it up as something deeper."

— Jim Sterling, Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

We've already seen how, for Bruce as for Tim LaHaye, this word "literally" is not meant literally. For them it means something more like "my way." It's opposite would be "mere symbolism," which means for them, roughly, "any meaning other than the meaning imposed on a passage by reading it my way.''"

—Fred Clark on Tribulation Force, [1]

I was reading the essays you turned in the other day, and everyone's writing is so sloppy! "I could care less" indicates that you still have some cares left to give! It's, "I COULDN'T care less"! I've seen this a lot these days, where people are using a phrase differently from its real meaning. It reminds me of something I've been hearing politicians saying: "My country, right or wrong." They wouldn't be saying it so stubbornly if they knew how it was originally used...

— Sadayo Kawakami, Persona 5

"Words have meanings. I mean, except for incels and scifi screenwriters."

—KeithInc., Fundies Say the Darndest Things

Cell: I am purely bio-mechanical, unlike my siblings Cyborg 17 and 18.
Piccolo: We call them androids.
Cell: Well good for you, you're wrong.

— Dragonball Z Abridged

You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word.

—Malcolm X, "Message to the Grass Roots"

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