Nancy Kress

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

American Writer

Said Sayrafiezadeh

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read.

American Playwright

Geraldine Brooks

I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The mot juste unarriving? Tell that to your desk.

Australian Journalist

Jane Leavy

Wherever Mantle went in the great metropolis - Danny's Hideaway, the Latin Quarter, the '21' Club, the Stork Club, El Morocco, Toots Shor's - his preferred drink was waiting when he walked through the door. Reporters waited at his locker for monosyllabic bons mots. Boys clustered by the players' gate, hoping to touch him.

Tim Minchin

The Internet now is completely full of memes, and it's interesting, the idea that instead of having a sign crotched on your door or a magnet on your fridge saying whatever cliches and bon mots, pictures laid out with some text are passed around and move really fast.

Australian Comedian

Rabih Alameddine

All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague.

Lebanese Artist

Theodore Zeldin

So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.

English Philosopher

Harold E. Varmus

I had learned of Gertrude Stein's bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.

American Scientist

Used to impress or amuse in social situations, 'mot' adds a sophisticated touch.

Social Charm

Overuse can seem forced. Deliver a 'mot' naturally for greater effect.

Use Sparingly

'Mot' carries a cultural connotation of French or intellectual wit.

Cultural Wit

In academic contexts, 'mot' signifies the precise word itself.

Literal Essence

'Mot' as a single word is less common; use it to show historical or academic awareness.

Not Commonly Used

Use 'mot' to stress the importance of word choice in communication.

Precision Needed

 activated in the back of the head because that's where he's seeing he's seeing his own brain and it's also hearing our instructions when we tell him to do things the signal is really deep inside of the brain as well and it's shining through because all of the data is inside of this volume and in just a second here you will see ok here mots ok now move your left foot okay so

Visualizing the medical...

 of kilowatts are nesting on the sheer rock cliffs far beyond the reach of predators now here's the daredevil part the Gila mots are more at home in the ocean and on the cliffs the chicks have hatched and they have to fly to that

Cliff Jumping PIPE National...

 Guillemots are all here to take advantage of the schools of young herring living in these inland waters the Gila mots are expert underwater hunters and can easily dive up to a

Mot

A witty or clever remark, often short.

Often appears as...

A single word.

Usage tips

Social Charm

Use Sparingly

Cultural Wit

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