Interesting Stories about Curious Words: From Stealing Thunder to Red Herrings

by Susie Dent

Join Susie Dent, lexicographer extraordinaire and Queen of Countdown 's Dictionary Corner, on a curious and exceedingly interesting adventure through all the very best RED HERRINGS, COCK AND BULL STORIES and NINE-DAY WONDERS in the English language.

Who was SWEET FANNY ADAMS?

What's the dramatic true story behind STEALING THUNDER?

Why is it CHANCING YOUR ARM when you take a risk?

What do bears have to do with LICKING INTO SHAPE?

Or robbers with PULLING SOMEONE'S LEG?

Why are CIRCLES VICIOUS?

And, what's so bad about a WHITE ELEPHANT?

'Nobody on earth knows more about the English language than Susie Dent' Gyles Brandreth

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, Linguistics, Ebooks, Education, Humor, History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2023

About the author

Dent was educated at the Marist Convent in Ascot, an independent Roman Catholic day school. She went on to Somerville College, Oxford for her B.A. in modern languages, then to Princeton University for her master's degree in German.

Dent is serves as the resident lexicographer and adjudicator for the letters rounds on long-running British game show Countdown. At the time she began work on Countdown in 1992, she had just started working for the Oxford University Press on producing English dictionaries, having previously worked on bilingual dictionaries.

Reviews

[Karen Keane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed with this book, it really just gave generic descriptions of words, the most interesting part was the Shakespearean connection to somebodvyhecwords.

[ellie sands · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was such a fun book to dip in & out of and read to friends in the car (or force my friends to read to me while i’m driving) i love the etymology of words and the reasoning behind everything however only 4 stars because at times it was just a basic one-sentence definition when i’d hoped for a deeper explanation of the word or phrase. but ! so much of it was brand new knowledge for me and it’s always so fun to learn new things !

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book after attending Dent’s talk on it at the Cheltenham Literature festival. I don’t believe she actually described it as what it is, which is a reference book. It’s a long list of short sentences on the etymology of various words. They’re grouped by themes such as ‘Money’, ‘Vegetable’, ‘Animal’, ‘Mineral’, and ‘Death’.

It’s tedious to read cover-to-cover. Which is what I did! More for dipping in and out of. Some of the origins of words are really interesting. It is fatiguing to read list after list of word origins. What makes it particularly fatiguing is the fact that some of the origins are described in vague two sentence explanations. Maybe a tangible narrative could have been weaved between all these words giving the reader some prose to latch on to.

It’s one of these books that might be useful in really niche etymological situations… Also, the book is called ‘Interesting stories about curious words’; however it really lacks stories. There are a few but they’re incredibly terse. If the Author wanted to be more accurate they could have titled it ‘Etymological origins of words’. This title would fit with the overwhelmingly dry subject matter.

[Beachcomber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books you dip in and out of, rather than read solidly - hence it taking me 2 months to finish. I had hoped it would be a bit more on the history/origin/first usages, rather than at times just giving us a definition (often which you’d already know). But some interesting bits in there even for me, having read quite a bit about language, society and history. For anyone new to the subject, they’d likely learn a lot more.

[Alma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed by this book. Sometimes I wanted more detail about the origins of an expression or word, and some of the "interesting" stories felt really obvious. However, it had plenty of genuinely curious bits of trivia and funny anecdotes, so it balanced out in the end, mostly?

[Arun Philips · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories behind popular phrases and words in English arranged by category, stories could’ve been more rich and explained well, I’d recommend my Dad’s YouTube channel Wordsmith’s Corner for much more rich and in depth word and phrase origins - YouTube.com/@thewordsmithscorner

[Jennifer Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book. Funny and interesting

[Toby Dowling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my goodness this was so boring, I had to DNF it. This book presents itself as etymological, but in reality it just felt like a slightly more fleshed out dictionary. I learnt little about the actual origin of said words and their makeup, but rather simply their definitions. It is a shame because I really like Susie Dent, and some of the stuff you learn in this book is admittedly rather interesting. But these nuggets of etymology are so sporadically buried within the book itself (which is actually quite long) that it was just not worth pushing through.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susie Dent is probably better know as the Countdown lexicographer.

The woman in the Dictionary corner of the same show.

So it's no surprise that this is a book about, well, words, and where they come from.

Or, perhaps more precisely, the origins of common phrases we all use, to the best of current belief (some are still unknown).

So one of those books you read for entertainment and knowledge, really, instead of for the plot!

[Clara Schindler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I didn’t read this right (I tried to read it from start to finish instead of picking and choosing the words and expressions I wanted to learn about), but I find that the grouping of the words in this book and the actual explanations were short and uninteresting for the most part.

[Sal Noel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Giving up. Was expecting more. This is so basic. May be half useful for someone learning English.

[Bec · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a mixed bag.

The title and introduction promise us "interesting stories" about words, presumably their origins, development and usage. And sometimes we do get that. But other times, the entry is literally just the basic definition of the word/phrase. I ... could just read a dictionary for that?

Other times, entries left me with more questions than I started with, because the explanation used niche terms I also didn't understand. Or else they referred briefly to things I suddenly wanted to know more about. For example, I always thought the origins of OK were obscure, but Dent confidently states it's "an abbreviation of 'Orl Korrect' ... a facetious spelling typical of the 1830s". Were the 1830s known for facetious spellings? Who was doing it? Why? Now I want to know!

Other times I felt like we didn't get the whole definition. For example, the entry for "upstage" describes its literal theatrical meaning, then continues, "Coloquially, the term 'upstage' means aloof". This intrigued me as I'm pretty well-read but have never heard it used that way. Google gave me one example ("His upstage attitude made it difficult to approach him"), but I mostly know it as a verb, meaning to draw attention away from someone else to yourself. Yet that meaning didn't get a mention.

And finally, I have no authority to declare this book to be wrong, but the section on 'eggcorns' was bizarre to me. I was expecting, say, "pacifically" instead of "specifically", but instead we got "putting the cat [cart] before the horse", "cut to the cheese [chase]" and "going at it hammer and thongs [tongs]". Who says those? Never seen them once.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had really terrible insomnia this month so I picked this book up on kindle to try and remedy it. Fortunately, it worked like a charm - so that's where the 3 stars are coming from. However, aside from its magical cure, ISACW missed a mark for me. Yes, I did pick it up because I knew it would be boring and would help me sleep - but I also was genuinely very interested in the book's subject. So on one hand, I'm grateful for the boring nature of this book - on the other, I skimmed the last 60% of the book. At the beginning I praised Dent's writing for its sense of humor & accessibility - but by the end, neither of these things came through for me. Most of the 'interesting' stories weren't interesting nor stories, they were just definitions and the Latin origins of words. I'm not sure who this book is for: it's not accessible nor fun enough for the average reader but neither is it in-depth or academic enough for someone genuinely into the subject. I don't know, but it is brilliant for insomnia.

In summary: a few interesting stories that I do think about (i.e. 'get your goat', 'stealing thunder'), overall boring, skimmed most of it, BRILLIANT for insomnia.

[Karen-Leigh]

Did you know that...

STEALING SOMEONE'S THUNDER is based on a real event;

The original FREELANCES were knights for hire ('free' + 'lance');

Nelson was the first TO TURN A BLIND EYE (putting a telescope to his missing eye to ignore orders);

GORDON BENNETT was a real (very badly behaved) person;

As was JACK THE LAD;

PULLING SOMEONE'S LEG was an 18th century robber's trick;

BUTTERING UP came from the Indian custom of throwing balls of ghee at statues of gods to ask for favours

This is just the tiniest taste of the many fascinating tales and histories behind our everyday words and phrases. In Interesting Stories about Curious Words , Susie Dent, Britain's cleverest lexicographer, linguistic expert and much-loved national treasure, explores all the very best RED HERRINGS, COCK AND BULL STORIES, WHITE ELEPHANTS and NINE-DAY WONDERS in the English language. There are enough stories to furnish a hundred conversations in a wonderful collection for everyone who loves words.

'Nobody on earth knows more about the English language than Susie Dent' Gyles Brandreth

[K Das · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5 stars

I had a lot of hopes from this book becoming one I permanently refer back to for great origin stories or anecdotes. I only could count a subset of 10-12 stories that were memorable ! It left me wanting much more. The chapters seem well segmented as an idea and words and phrases picked here and there caught one’s eye. But so many anecdotes were not well told and did not grip the reader. I actually left some of the phrase original explanations more confused than informed. The story on cock and bull story, and buttering up were interesting. But they were far too many one liner incomplete explanations and strings of 100s of words that didn’t keep me hooked enough to recommend this as a fun fact book to anyone.

[Pip · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be a good book to read while a guest at a holiday let. I like a book that you can dip into whenever you have the odd minute. It definitely has some little gems of information. Having said that, I was a bit disappointed. I really like Susie Dent. She has a wonderful way of communicating her love of words. I enjoyed her murder mystery. But I found this book less inspiring than I expected. The organisation made it seem very repetitive, eg. when reading different entries for "cat's pyjamas", "bees' knees" and "dog's bollocks". I felt like it could have been a slimmer volume without losing the magic in words and their origins.

[Polly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love etymology and this book was a delight. I expected it to be in a story format similar to the chapter introductions, rather than dictionary entries, but I had lots of fun learning new facts anyway. You can easily go down a rabbit hole with this book if you're interested in how different words progressed through time up to the present or how different languages affected your own (such as some unexpected french loan words we use in bulgarian that I just found out about).

[Paul Gormley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. Many of the entries are simple definitions and of very little interest to an English speaker. A few too many words and phrases where a focus on actual curious words and phrases would have been more ‘up to the mark’ (p45).

A book for the bedside table to dip into from time to time and it does have a useful index for those keen to identify the origins of a particular phrase.

[John Langley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed this, and now have it as a reference. Susie Dent says so much I cannot remember even a third of the words. But, the organisation of it is good, you can dip into sections and also use the index. What usually happens on one of these word hunts is that you end up reading more than you came for!

[Erica Char]

DNF —pg90

So, I want to like this, and I think if I left it on the table to gander at occasionally, I would.

But it’s from the library and it’s not moving fast enough for me to enjoy before I have to return it.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and detailed book. Researching this is worth four stars and it must have been a massive task. Readable certainly and occasionally amusing, though still a bit of a plod and something I've kept coming back to.

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nothing new. If there’s a word or phrase you’re curious about just look it up online.

[Isabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

bit repetitive

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting and entertaining collection of etymologies. I admire Susie Dent's contagious love for words.

[Pers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading.

[David Meiklejohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of definitions of words and phrases, many interesting, some funny. Hopefully I can remember some when they crop up.

[Julie Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting phrases and explanations of words and sayings. Some more interesting than others , some funny ones which I’ll try to remember 😊

[Anders Gustafsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for those interested in etymology. Well-written and fun to read

[Dronerg · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK read

Some interesring things but reads as if just copied from a dictionary. The first part of the book was the most interesting part of it

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creative accumulation of unfamiliarized words and meaning.