'We used to have a word for the warmth of the sun on a winter’s day': Susie Dent on why words from the past matter

What is your favourite word? As a writer, one hopes to answer something suitably grand; or, better yet, something out of use. My own shortlist skews both ways (‘stentorian’, ‘svelte’, ‘sybaritic’...) until one checks how often these appear in text and finds they are not, in fact, in danger of dying.

According to Google Books Ngram Viewer, which tracks word frequency from 1500 to 2022, use of ‘stentorian’ has more than doubled since 1980, that of ‘svelte’ is at a near-record high and that of ‘sybaritic’ remains above 1982 levels, when a buoyant economy meant we had more reason to use the term. Against the moral panic surrounding a decline in reading and written abilities, a growing respect for vocabulary appears to have emerged.

‘A surprising outcome of the internet age,’ says Susie Dent, who has adjudicated words on Channel 4’s Countdown since 1992, ‘has been an increase in the variety of words we use rather than the opposite.’ Her claim that ‘online tribes’ rely on ‘highly specific vocabulary often unintelligible to outsiders’ — and often is lifted from the archives — echoes a view from Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, professor of English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. ‘It boils down to speech communities,’ he tells me: groups that form through shared adaptations of language (‘to read’, in drag culture, means to pick apart an individual rather than dive into a book) and thereby cementing affinities.

The newfound popularity of complicated language can be traced back to YouTube and podcast hosts, whose loyal audiences reward the niche and the specific against the wider landscape’s tendency to dumb down. Articulacy has become a key differentiator in an age where intellect and communication are more highly prized than ever. Gillian Tett, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, wrote in the FT last May that financial firms are now hiring Humanities graduates over those in STEM as they attempt to fill roles that require greater literacy and critical thinking.

Yet another reason to speak so well that it becomes idiosyncratic is because it is funny. One is reminded of Moira Rose, the eccentric matriarch from Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, who uses such words as ‘pettifogging’ and ‘peregrination’ as casually as one might hail a cab (or, as she might say herself, ‘summon a hired conveyance’). That words are comedy extends to those we avoid. Last week, New York Magazine revived its ‘Queries’ newsletter, a series by copy chief Carl Rosen about the publication’s list of ‘banned’ terms, namely ‘nondescript’, ‘unhinged’ and the suffix ‘-maxxing’, gently ribbing those guilty of such clichés.

The best vocabulary, Dent concludes, is that which is borrowed from the past. We used to have a word for the warmth of the sun on a winter’s day: ‘apricity’. It is high time we reclaimed it.

This feature originally appeared in the October 28, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.