Word definition: mention

Etimology


From Middle English mencioun, mention, from Old French mention, from Latin mentiōnem, accusative of mentiō (“a mention, calling to mind”).

noun


mention (plural mentions)

A speaking or notice of anything, usually in a brief or cursory manner. Used especially in the phrase make mention of.

(Internet, plural only) A social media feed, a list of replies or posts mentioning a person.

Examples


I will make mention of thy righteousness.

And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention / Of me more must be heard of.

"I would like Twitter to put some kind of filters in place," suggests Prakash. "At present I can't see troll tweets if I block the user, but others who go into my 'mentions' can do so, and read the graphic abuse, which is disturbing."

In response to the flood of replies, Chance returned to Twitter several hours later — presumably, after his mentions calmed down — to request that users format their resumes as "creative decks, pitches or proposals" […] .

I didn’t delete my account — yet! I know! I am full of shame! — but I did change the way I use it .

verb


mention (third-person singular simple present mentions, present participle mentioning, simple past and past participle mentioned)

To make a short reference to something.

(philosophy, linguistics) To utter a word or expression in order to refer to the expression itself, as opposed to its usual referent.

Examples


Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms. […] Banks and credit-card firms are kept out of the picture. Talk to enough people in the field and someone is bound to mention the “democratisation of finance”.

I can illustrate this by mentioning the word lead. Now you have no way of knowing for sure which meaning I have in mind until I give it some context by using it in a sentence.

If the verbatimness view derives from the popular notion that DST repeats 'the actual words spoken', a second line of thought takes its cue from Quine's philosophical distinction between words which are “used” vs. words which are merely “mentioned”.

If I said rightly, “'Niggers' is a seven letter word,” I would be mentioning the word, and when we write it, we use mention-quotes for this purpose . If I said, rightly or wrongly, “Niggers are good athletes,” then I would be using “niggers,” not merely mentioning it.

Related words


synonyms

come to mention it

don't mention it

more than one cares to mention

not to mention

now that you mention it

now you mention it

unmention

Data provided by Wiktionary