The Queen of Dictionary Corner
Britain’s best-loved wordsmith and the Queen of Dictionary Corner, Susie Dent, is back to entertain and educate us with her pick of language’s greatest hits. Before her tour Word Perfect arrives at City Varieties next month, she shares some of her stories from the wonderful world of words.
Written by Anna Cryer
Countdown and Dictionary Corner
For someone whose life revolves around a true love of the English language and who is razor-sharp at deciphering the whimsies of our mother tongue, Susie Dent doesn’t seem like the sort of person to be tripped up by the simple things. But she admits she has been stumped, albeit on the rare occasion.
Countdown co-presenter and Queen of Dictionary Corner for more than 30 years, Susie – who will hit the road with her all-new second 26-date tour Word Perfect this summer – has many fond memories of her time on the show and recalls one particularly amusing moment.
“I was doing some work on the tour the other day, and I was reminiscing about Richard Whiteley, when one of my most embarrassing moments came back to me,” Susie relates.
“The letters had been selected, the clock had ticked down, and a contestant offered their five-letter word. I didn’t quite catch what they said, so I asked them to spell it, which they duly did: D. O. I. N. G. In my head this translated to ‘doi-ng’ to rhyme with ‘boing’, so I proceeded to look it up. Until Richard saved my bacon by chipping in with ‘It’s do-ing Susie’.”
Susie Dent.
Susie turned down the offer to join the team of Oxford University Press lexicographers who took turns in Dictionary Corner three times, but a persistent boss wouldn’t let it lie.
“It wasn’t on my bucket list to be on TV; I’m happiest when I’m below the radar! But now I’m so grateful my audition was successful,” she said. “As for my first appearance, I said as little as possible! There is a clip online of that first show, when I sat next to Rula Lenska and looked utterly frozen.
“I will be forever amazed, and grateful, that they kept me on. After about 10 years, Richard and Carol wanted a full-time lexicographer within the team, and happily I ended up alongside them as a permanent fixture.”
But for someone who had no inclination to appear on TV, Susie has a very clear place in her heart for the Channel 4 tea-time words and numbers quiz and its Friday-night naughtier sibling 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
“8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown has reminded many of those people who grew up with the show of the joy of the game, and of course it’s brought in the laughs to go with it” she said.
“The real beauty of Countdown is its format. Anybody who watches it can understand the rules of the game within minutes and then join in to play along – no matter what their age or ability. Even with the comedy version, people do still love to play the game. Many of our contestants watched the show with their parents and grandparents, and so it has that real connection with family, too.
“After 33 years I still feel the adrenaline as the clock starts to tick down. It really is one of the biggest joys of my life. My feet will stay under the table in Dictionary Corner for as long as viewers will have me!”
Susie’s role on Countdown has made her a household name, and she has an incredible knack for being able to sum up a moment or a mood with an excellent word.
The joys of language
In her new tour Word Perfect, she is looking forward to taking audiences on a “romp through some of the joys of the English language”, looking at specific words and their stories, as well as many of the quirks which make our mother tongue so brilliantly unpredictable as well as magical.
Speaking about her new tour, Susie said: “The English language will never stop surprising and delighting me: it is as wayward as it is majestic, while the dictionary is as full of magic, drama and adventure as you will find anywhere. I can’t wait to walk down some more of its secret alleyways with the Word Perfect audiences, and to hear their own questions about our curious mother tongue! We’re going to have a lot of fun.
Susie Dent.
“I’ll be looking at some of the astonishing secret lives many of our words and phrases have held, and the imperfections of language and how people perceive them. I’ll also introduce some long-lost gems from the past, and tackle some of the big questions about language. Which came first, orange the fruit or the colour? How should we really pronounce scone? And do our names really turn out to be good guides to our career?
“I’m always on a mission to revive lost words, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of my favourites. In the Victorian era, for example, sausages were known as ‘bags of mystery’ because no one ever knew what was in them. Eggs were ‘cacklefarts’, and an umbrella was a ‘bumbershoot’. I’ll also be delving into collective nouns. Who decided it should be a murder of crowds, or a parliament of owls, and where have some of these come from?”
Best-selling author, and Britain’s best-loved wordsmith, Susie recalls always loving words as a child, but her first loves were foreign languages; she studied German and French and initially worked on bilingual dictionaries for the Oxford University Press.
“Studying the etymology of English only really became a passion in my 20s, but I’ve not looked back since” she recalls. “As a child, I used to read vocab books in the car on long journeys. I was lost in them, lapping up the shape and sound and rhythms of words. I loved storybooks too, don’t get me wrong, but that was mainly because I could look up the words within them! I would lie on my stomach in a sunny spot at home and would never be happier than when I was reading a book with a dictionary next to me.”
From words to books
Susie’s tour will coincide with the launch of her next two books, Words For Life and her children’s book Roots We Share: 100 Words That Bring Us Together.
“Roots We Share is a sequel to my first children’s book, Roots Of Happiness. It’s a collection of 100 words that describe the things that unite rather than divide us, to help children keep hold of the positives in life,” Susie said.
“And in a similar vein, Words For Life is a collection of 365 words to give readers of any age a boost for every day of the year. My aim is to inspire a smile or sense of wonder, so that others can discover some of the words that have done the same for me.”
As a lover of all things ‘words’ it seems inevitable that Susie would become a best-selling author, surely?
“I certainly feel incredibly lucky that I can combine Countdown with writing and talking about language,” she says. “But I don’t think it was inevitable that I would end up writing books. I tend to love words as individuals, the journey each one has made, like mini biographies. But my move into fiction [Susie’s debut novel Guilty By Definition was published in 2024] was inspired by my dad. He was so very proud of a short story I wrote as a child that appeared in the school magazine. Until he encouraged me to return to fiction, I was perfectly happy with the dictionary, which has adventures in spades!
“My editor Kelly then asked if I’d ever considered the parallels between word detection and crime detection. That conversation sparked something, and I began to consider the idea of exploring the darker side of words and the people who chart them.”
Words For Life by Susie Dent.
So how does Susie marry her intense love of words with the writing process – is she able to let it flow, or does every word need to be checked before committing pen to paper, or fingertip to keyboard?
“I always have the Oxford English Dictionary on my screen in front of me. But when I’m writing fiction I often write in long-hand rather than on my computer, otherwise I tend to self-edit too much as I go. In long-hand, it’s a more free-flowing process for me, and then I can polish and refine as I type it up.
“And while I use the dictionary online, the joy of holding a book is utterly physical. There will always be a place for ebooks, but nothing beats the real deal. The first thing I do when I get copies of my books is smell them!
“Children in particular still seem to love that physicality of books – perhaps because of the link to their parents reading to them, and adults gain from that process too. Reading is such an important part of childhood, even as we see it being gradually eroded by phones. People are of course still reading when they are scrolling online, but in a very different way.
“I will always believe that if there’s one gift to give to our children, it’s a love of reading. And that of course includes the dictionary!”
The Roots We Share by Susie Dent.
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