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🗣️ To repeat words 🗣️ A repeated saying ❝ Punctuation marks 💵 To give a price
to quote

to quote

710 1.6
To repeat someone else's exact words from a book, speech, or person
  • verb
  • /kwoʊt/
translation icon : citar
  • I'm quoting from Philip Guedalla, a biographer of the '30s.
  • quote an author
  • quote a passage
  • quote verbatim

She said, and I'm quoting, I wouldn't call it living.

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Examples

  • In his speech, the professor decided to quote a well-known author to support his argument.

  • Can I quote you on that, Sheriff?

    The Front Page (1974)

  • But she thinks this is going to make people, quote, feel safe.

  • But I think it would be appropriate to quote him now.

    The Pelican Brief (1993)

  • And so I was going to quote the Bible.

  • I love it when you quote Ronnie Reagan.

    Eating Miss Campbell (2022)

  • In this connection, it is instructive to quote former Secretary of State James Baker:

    Academic text (1999)

  • Secretary of Defense Mattis told them, quote, you're buying time.

  • To quote a famous friend I know, sometimes that's just how it rolls, no pun intended.

    25 Hill (2011)

  • My editor proposed that I summarize or quote from it to make things clearer for such readers.

    Academic text (2011)

Synonyms

to cite
vsto quote
421 3.6

To mention a source to support a statement

repeats exact words from a source to support or show the origin

Idioms

quote unquote
  • Informal
6 7.7

To show a word someone else said or that you doubt it

Phrasal Verbs

to pull quote
  • Literature
1 4.6

To take a short line from a text and show it separately to get attention

to scare quote
  • Literature
8.2

To put quotation marks around a word to show doubt or irony

Compounds

famous quote
6 2.5

A saying that many people know and repeat

pull quote
  • Literature
1 4.1

A short quotation from an article shown separately to draw attention

scare quote
  • Literature
1 7.7

Quotation marks put around a word to show doubt or irony

rent-a-quote
  • Offensive
9.9

A person the media often asks to give short predictable comments

single quote
3.4

A punctuation mark like an apostrophe used to show speech or a quote inside another quote

How Exact

to quote
710 1.6
to recite
86 3.5
report
∞ 1.3
to paraphrase
64 4.1
to summarize
  • US
90 3.0

Surface Forms

quote infinitive
quoting present participle
quotes third person singular
quoted past
quoted past participle

Etymology

The word quote comes from the Latin root quot-, which means 'how many' and also appears in quota. That idea of naming an exact line led to using quote as a verb, so to quote someone is to repeat their exact words.