Best quotes by Susie Dent on Words

Checkout quotes by Susie Dent on Words

  • My work, my love of words, became my refuge, both when I was working on bilingual dictionaries for Oxford University Press and then via my involvement with 'Countdown' - and now 'Catsdown,' as I call it.
    - Susie Dent
  • As dialect began to be collected in the late 19th century, such words as Yorkshire's 'gobslotch' emerged, revealing the burgeoning association between gluttony and stupidity.
    - Susie Dent
  • We all know that little words or phrases can mean a lot, yet so few of us know just what to say. Phrases, such as 'chin up,' or 'it could be worse,' usually have the opposite effect; they feel tired and impersonal, even dismissive.
    - Susie Dent
  • Can I get a mochaccino?': a statement that, for many, is worse than any number of nails down a blackboard. Not on account of the coffee - most of us drink Ventis aplenty these days - rather it's the 'can I get?' - three words that regularly top the list of British bugbears.
    - Susie Dent
  • From the start, English has happily absorbed words from every tongue it's encountered.
    - Susie Dent
  • I was fascinated by the shape of words even before I knew what they meant.
    - Susie Dent
  • According to my parents, I've always liked to tune into the conversations of others. But rather than hope for a snippet of salacious gossip, it has always been the words themselves that I wanted to understand.
    - Susie Dent
  • English has always been a mongrel tongue, snapping up words from every continent its speakers encountered.
    - Susie Dent
  • I've been obsessed with words since I was a little girl, and I am fortunate that each week as resident word expert on 'Countdown' I am ideally placed to quiz my guests in dictionary corner about the words and phrases they use.
    - Susie Dent
  • We are surrounded by hundreds of 'tribes,' each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and phrases that together form an idiosyncratic phrasebook, years in the making.
    - Susie Dent
  • One of the joys of language is its constant evolution, and a lexicographer's job is both to track new words and to reassess those from the past.
    - Susie Dent