Quotes from Susie Dent

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.

English may be the fastest moving language in the world, but there are plenty of concepts, sensations and everyday occurrences which lack a pithy word to describe them. Take the clunkiness of 'the day before yesterday' and 'the day after tomorrow': German provides single words for both.

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.

Slang has always moved this way. From Cockney rhyming slang to codes swapped among highwaymen, they're tribal badges of identity, bonding mechanisms designed to distinguish the initiated, and to keep strangers out.

The best time to catch tribal jargon is when it's not looking.

Slang has different functions: many of the words we use are playful and a lot are tribal - we speak the same way as the groups we are part of. A great deal are also euphemistic, so it's no surprise that a third of us are perplexed by their meanings and origins.

Footballers, managers, pundits and fans make up possibly the biggest tribe of them all, especially in this country. Whatever is said by pundits is echoed across sofas and in pubs all over the nation.

What I've discovered is that from football fans to undertakers, secret agents to marble-players and politicians, we all are part of at least one tribe. By tribes, I'm talking anthropologically; these groups are determined less by genes and more by the work they do or the passions they pursue.

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.

Almost half the adult population finds discussing the subject of money difficult. Slang words help us to navigate these conversations by making us feel more comfortable and confident.

In the earliest days, make-up and moralising were intertwined. The 'cosmetic slops and washes' of the 17th and 18th centuries aimed to smooth complexions and revive a woman's 'bloom' - but their critics were never far behind.

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.

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.

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.

quiddling' (attending to the trivial tasks in life as a way of avoiding the important ones).

Language is a democratic enterprise.

And there is always the argument-closing 'Villain, I have done thy mother', a retort from Titus Andronicus of such eviscerating wit that we still honour it today with jokes beginning with 'your mum'.

In South Korea, some 20 million people share just five surnames. Every one of Denmark's top 20 surnames ends in '-sen,' meaning 'son of,' a pattern that is replicated across Scandinavia. British surnames have never favoured such neatness, and we can be grateful for that.

German has always felt the language that I come back to. It's given a very hard time by most people for being ugly and guttural. In fact, it's one of the most melodic, lyrical languages around. And German literature is amazing. It's just a treasury for me.

I'm a work in progress. I've started doing spin classes, which always clears my head.

Booze' was once a popular term in the slang or 'cant' of the criminal underworld, which may explain its rebellious overtones today.

Every sport, every profession, every group united by a single passion draws on a lexicon that is uniquely theirs, and theirs for a reason.

Language is essentially tribal, so jargon can actually be a really good thing because it unites people.

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.