Usage Quotes (3 quotes)
Usus quem penes arbitrium est et jus norma loquendi.
Usage, in which lies the decision, the law, and the norm of speech.
Usage, in which lies the decision, the law, and the norm of speech.
— Horace
From 'Epistola ad Pisones', known as 'De Arte Poetica', lines 71-72. The Works of Horace (1893), 304. Another translation gives, “If usage wills, within whose power are the laws and rules of speech.” A looser interpretation explains, “Words, like other human things, have their day, and pass and change.” A related comment would be, “Use is the tyrant of languages.” In context, Horace is meaning the usage of refined, cultured, educated class in their writings and speech as masters of the language.
As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference.
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There was once an Editor of the Chemical Society, given to dogmatic expressions of opinion, who once duly said firmly that 'isomer' was wrong usage and 'isomeride' was correct, because the ending 'er' always meant a 'do-er'. 'As in water?' snapped Sidgwick.
Obituary of Nevil Vincent Sidgwick by L. E Sutton, Proceedings of the Chemical Society (1958), 318.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
