"it's not what you say but how you say it" meaning in English

See it's not what you say but how you say it in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=}} it's not what you say but how you say it, {{en-proverb}} it's not what you say but how you say it
  1. The tone and delivery of communication is at least as important as what is actually being said. Related terms: it's not what you know but who you know
    Sense id: en-it's_not_what_you_say_but_how_you_say_it-en-proverb-7EVazXHw Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English proverbs

Download JSON data for it's not what you say but how you say it meaning in English (1.2kB)

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      "expansion": "it's not what you say but how you say it",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "it's not what you say but how you say it",
      "name": "en-proverb"
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "senses": [
    {
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        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English proverbs",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2018, Alyson Connolly, Public Speaking Skills For Dummies",
          "text": "Say the punch line loud and clear. You can even increase your volume and really emphasize the last word. Sometimes it's not what you say but how you say it.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The tone and delivery of communication is at least as important as what is actually being said."
      ],
      "id": "en-it's_not_what_you_say_but_how_you_say_it-en-proverb-7EVazXHw",
      "links": [
        [
          "tone",
          "tone"
        ],
        [
          "delivery",
          "delivery"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "it's not what you know but who you know"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "it's not what you say but how you say it"
}

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
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        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "it's not what you say but how you say it",
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    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "it's not what you say but how you say it",
      "name": "en-proverb"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "it's not what you know but who you know"
    }
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        "The tone and delivery of communication is at least as important as what is actually being said."
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          "delivery"
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  "word": "it's not what you say but how you say it"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.