say — OAT · Shobdo

say

verb

1 she felt her stomach flutter as he said her name:

speak, utter, voice, pronounce, give utterance to, give voice to, vocalize.

2 “I must go,” she said:

declare, state, announce;

remark, observe, mention, comment, note, add;

reply, respond, answer, rejoin;

whisper, mutter, mumble, mouth;

informal come out with.

3 Newall says he's innocent:

claim, maintain, assert, hold, insist, contend, aver, affirm, avow;

allege, profess;

formal opine;

rare asseverate.

4 I can't conjure up the words to say how I feel | what are you trying to say, Inspector?:

express, put into words, phrase, articulate, communicate, make known, get across, put across, convey, verbalize, render, tell;

reveal, divulge, impart, disclose;

imply, suggest, signify, denote, mean.

5 they sang hymns and said a prayer:

recite, repeat, utter, deliver, perform, declaim, orate.

6 the lighted dial of her watch said one twenty:

indicate, show, read.

7 I'd say about 90 percent of my stories are off the top of my head:

estimate, judge, guess, hazard a guess, dare say, predict, speculate, surmise, conjecture, venture;

imagine, think, believe;

informal reckon.

8 let's say you'd just won a million pounds:

suppose, assume, imagine, presume, take as a hypothesis, hypothesize, postulate, posit.

9 she determined to find something to say in his favor:

adduce, propose, advance, bring forward, offer, plead.

□ be said

it is said that she lived to be over a hundred |

his widow was said to be inconsolable:

be reported, be thought, be believed, be alleged, be rumored, be reputed, be put around;

be described, be asserted;

apparently, seemingly, it seems that, it appears that, (so) they say, (so) the story goes, by all accounts, rumor has it, the rumor is.

□ that is to say

people emigrated for economic reasons—that is to say, because they were poor:

in other words, to put it another way, to rephrase it;

i.e., that is, to wit, viz., namely, sc.;

Latin id est, scilicet, videlicet.

□ to say the least

his performance was disappointing to say the least:

to put it mildly, putting it mildly, without any exaggeration, at the very least, as an understatement.

noun

1 Miss Honey was determined to have her say:

right/chance/turn to speak, right/chance/turn to express one's opinion, vote, opinion, view, voice;

informal one's twopence worth, one's twopenn'orth.

2 don't I have any say in the matter?:

influence, sway, weight, authority, voice, input, share, part;

informal clout.