A biography for Susie Denthasn’t been written yet.
“The one thing - apart from assumptions about German - that I have to challenge frequently is people assuming that lexicographers are fierce protectors of the language when in fact our job is not to put a lid on it.”
“I've been collecting linguistic oddities for years and years, ever since I was small. I've got loads of notebooks where I've jotted down things I couldn't make sense of.”
“Among the best of Hitchcock's own psychological thrillers is 'Spellbound,' whose story unusually wrapped the subject of psychoanalysis around a murder mystery.”
“I love American English, not least because a lot of it was ours to begin with. Indeed, many Americanisms can be found in the works of William Shakespeare.”
“If a term becomes too popular, its irritant value is ramped up. The impulse is then to replace it with something else.”
“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.”
“The earliest dictionaries were collections of criminal slang, swapped amongst ne'er-do-wells as a means of evading the authorities or indeed any outsider who might threaten the trade.”
“Political boundaries in their most physical terms can make or break an election. The manipulation of electoral districts can make them either 'blue-hot' or 'red-hot' depending on the level of intensity felt in either camp to such shifting ground.”
“Slang moves on so fast that most new words disappear soon after they are coined. But there is always something that sticks behind.”
“I can do some of the number puzzles.”
“As a nation we love our dialects, and there is a lot of regional variance in the names for different foods - barmcake, bap or bun anyone?”
“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.”
“New words travel from one variety of English to another and at a rapidly increasing rate, thanks to the way language is exchanged today over e-mail, chat rooms, TV, etc.”
“Super Tuesday is the day on which most states hold their primaries. Its darker partner is Dirty Tricks Thursday: the Thursday before an election when candidates release scandalous stories to garner bad publicity for their opponent: the timing means the accused will have little time to refute the allegations.”
“I'm not a brazen extrovert, but I'm not as blushing or demure as people might think.”
“The enduring image I will keep of Jane Goodall is of her emotional goodbye to a chimp she had rescued and nurtured, on the day of the animal's release.”
“There is an art to eavesdropping, but I think to some extent we are all guilty of picking up those little odds and ends that can be quite intriguing if you analyse them.”
“Why use salty when you can have brackish? It carries a sense of part-water, part-salt, too, just like the sea.”
“I was fascinated by the shape of words even before I knew what they meant.”
“In the middle of the 20th century, aspirations to sound 'proper' were passionately pursued. Dictionaries as late as the Seventies include many pronunciations that could cut the proverbial glass.”