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Ali G: How many words does you know?
Noam Chomsky: Normally, humans, by maturity, have tens of thousands of them.
Ali G: What is some of 'em?
—Da Ali G Show Did you know that both mammal and matter derive from baby talk? Have you noticed how wince makes you wince? Ever wonder why so many h-words have to do with breath? Roy Blount Jr. certainly has, and after forty years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, he still can’t get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the electricity, the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies, of letters and their combinations. Blount does not prescribe proper English. The franchise he claims is “over the counter.” Three and a half centuries ago, Thomas Blount produced Blount’s Glossographia, the first dictionary to explore derivations of English words. This Blount’s Glossographia takes that pursuit to other levels, from Proto-Indo-European roots to your epiglottis. It rejects the standard linguistic notion that the connection between words and their meanings is “arbitrary.” Even the word arbitrary is shown to be no more arbitrary, at its root, than go-to guy or crackerjack. From sources as venerable as the OED (in which Blount finds an inconsistency, at whisk) and as fresh as Urbandictionary.com (to which Blount has contributed the number-one definition of alligator arm), and especially from the author’s own wide-ranging experience, Alphabet Juice derives an organic take on language that is unlike, and more fun than, any other.- Sales Rank: #825014 in Books
- Published on: 2008-10-14
- Released on: 2008-10-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.30" h x 1.31" w x 6.31" l, 1.10 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Blount (Long Time Leaving) is a contributing editor to the Atlantic Monthly, a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! quiz show and a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary. He displays his pleasure in words with his subtitle—The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; with Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory—as he dishes up an alphabetical array of verbal reverberations, weasel words and linguistic acrobatics from aardvark to zoology (Pronounced zo-ology. Not zoo-ology. Look at the letters. Count the o's). Along the way, he compares dictionaries, slings slang, digs for roots, posts ripostes and dotes on anecdotes. The format is nearly identical to Roy Copperud's still valuable but out-of-print A Dictionary of Usage and Style (1964). Blount's book is equally instructive and scholarly, but is also injected with a full dose of word play on steroids. Quotes, quips, euphemisms, rhymes and rhythms, literary references (Lo-lee-ta) and puns: The lowest form of wit, it used to be said, but that was before Ann Coulter. Throughout, the usage advice is sage and also fun, since the writer's own wild wit, while bent and Blount, is razor sharp. (Oct. 21)
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From Booklist
Ever since Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation took the 2004 best-seller lists by storm, publishers have been casting about for their next dark-horse language book. Farrar may have found it in Blount’s latest title. Much more garrulous than Truss, a shameless name-dropper, and a purveyor of endless anecdotes always casting himself in the starring role, Blount is supremely entertaining here and more than matches Truss’ spirited tone. Laid out in A–Z dictionary format, the book ranges from the pointed critique of conjunction dysfunction to the hilarious diatribe under tump, which finds Blount spending weeks looking for his own name in the new edition of American Heritage Dictionary. Feeling that he is long overdue to be cited for word usage, Blount envies “Hunter Thompson for booger, Jimmy Breslin for boozehound, and William Safire for hoohah.” He is, however willing to concede snob to Tom Wolfe. Although some entries are only tangentially connected to his ostensible subject (see TV, on being on), many others provide Blount with ample opportunity to wax eloquent on the joys of language; his perfect parsing of the allure of the phrase “wonky exegeses” will elicit smiles from fellow language lovers. A knowledgeable handbook that is also chock-full of funny, colorful opinions on marriage, movies, and Monet. --Joanne Wilkinson
Review
“Alphabet Juice is pure Roy Blount Jr. amusing, bemusing, and smart as hell.” —Fortune “Gracefully erudite and joyous.” —Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe “If everybody's first English teacher were Roy Blount Jr., we might still be trillions in debt, but we would be so deeply in love with words and their magic that we'd hardly notice.” —The Dallas Morning News “If your eyes have only skimmed over the long subtitle of Alphabet Juice and just vaguely registered that the book has something to do with words, please go back and read the entire subtitle again, slowly. This time listen to the syncopation of the clauses, as well as the alliterative music of the p’s and t’s, then note the juxtaposition of high and low style (‘combinations thereof,’ ‘innards’), the punchy yet unexpected nouns (‘gists,’ ‘pips’), that touch of genteel sexual innuendo (‘secret parts’), and the concluding flourish of the gustatory. Like Roy Blount Jr. himself, his new book's subtitle neatly balances real learning with easy-loping charm.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Quotes, quips, euphemisms, rhymes and rhythms, literary references (‘Lo-lee-ta’) and puns: “The lowest form of wit, it used to be said, but that was before Ann Coulter.” Throughout, the usage advice is sage and also fun, since the writer’s own wild wit, while bent and Blount, is razor sharp.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A knowledgeable handbook that is also chock-full of funny, colorful opinions on marriage, movies, and Monet.” —Booklist “Roy Blount Jr.’s Alphabet Juice—a relatively short encyclopedic compendium of English usage—pretends to be a practical guide a la Strunk and White or Lynne Truss. But it has more in common with Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary. The author might prefer a comparison to Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. Blount shares with Bierce and Twain a gift for misdirection, an inclination to pull off the fanciest of tricks right in front of us, all the while decrying fanciness. Alphabet Juice pegs knowledgeable as “one ugly word.” But Blount is one of our most deeply and broadly knowledgeable writers, and his new book is a personal document, a neo-Platonic manifesto exalting the natural music of language (“Doesn’t dog sound like what the English expect from a dog?”). Blount’s bull’s-eye, which he hits unerringly, is the ecstatic center where talking, writing and singing meet. . . . So Blount has figured out a way to have his fancy cake and eat it, too, with a plastic fork like a regular joe. And guess what? He’s sharing the cake, and it’s the best cake you ever tasted.” —Paste “I love Roy Blount. I think you should, too. He makes you laugh out loud—a lot (every couple of pages in this book). Human laughter comes in all sizes, colors, flavors and states of emotional dress, from outraged ("The Daily Show") to infantile (Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck) to raunchy and lowdown ("Californication.") Blount elicits the laughs of generosity and enlightenment; it's the spectacle of a fellow citizen maintaining benevolence while still remaining better and more straightforward than the rest us. (How exactly did our three candidates for Twainhood—Blount, Vonnegut and Keillor—get to be such decent chaps, given the darkness of their inspiration?)” —The Buffalo News “Roy Blount Jr. is a famous American humorist. But that clipped description is kind of like saying that Paris is simply an inland French city: The outline is accurate as far as it goes, but it leaves out all of the captivating details. ” —The Boston Globe "A book that’s as much fun to read backward as forward, Alphabet Juice is also a one-of-a-kind work of literature that will help you write better. It’s like The Elements of Style, only updated and hilarious." —Ian Frazier, author of Lamentations of the Father "Roy Blount Jr. is one of the most clever [see sly, witty, cunning, nimble] wordsmiths cavorting in the English language, or what remains of it. Alphabet Juice proves once again that he’s incapable of writing a flat or unfunny sentence." —Carl Hiaasen, author of Nature Girl "A few words about Alphabet Juice: Hilarious! Brilliant! Provocative! Okay, one more—Suaviloquent!" — Daniel Klein, co-author of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar "Alphabet Juice is the book Roy Blount Jr. was born to write, which, considering his prodigious talent, is saying a lot. Did you know that the word laugh is linguistically related to chickens and pie? This is the book that any of us who urgently, passionately love words—love to read them, roll them over the tongue, and learn their life stories—were lucky enough to be born to read." —Cathleen Schine, author of The New Yorkers
Most helpful customer reviews
60 of 62 people found the following review helpful.
Engaging, entertaining, and even educational
By R. M. Peterson
ALPHABET JUICE is a potpourri of comments on words and the English language, arranged in alphabetically-ordered entries and presented with Blount's characteristic good humor. It is somewhat akin to books on the proper use of words and language, but it should not be pigeon-holed as simply a user's guide. While it does contain a fair measure of advice and commentary on usage (Blount is not particularly uptight, but he does have a prescriptive bent), it also has generous doses of etymology, word play, jokes, and personal experiences and anecdotes. It appears likely that Blount has been collecting material for this book over many years of his career as a writer and somewhat populist man-of-letters.
Blount does push one particular thesis in the book. Contrary to those scholars who hold that the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary, Blount insists that the sound of many words "somehow sensuously evoke[s] the essence of the word." To characterize this quality, he coins the word "sonicky." A few miscellaneous examples (out of hundreds) of sonicky words from the book: "crunch," "gallop," "grunt," "mum," and "squelch." Blount: "If linguisticians can't hear any correspondence between sound and sense in those words, they aren't listening. Even when words aren't coined with sound and sense conjunctively in mind, the words that sound most like what they mean have a survival advantage." And throughout the book, Blount marshals plenty of evidence for this thesis.
But please don't get the idea that ALPHABET JUICE is some sort of high-brow, academic tome. To fully appreciate it, one certainly needs to be generally literate and to care about words and language, but one does not need to hold a graduate degree in English or in linguistics. Indeed, ALPHABET JUICE may put off many who do hold degrees in those fields.
To give you a better idea of the wide and eclectic range of the book, here are several of my favorite entries or discussions: Bushisms and Berraisms; book blurbs; "hopefully" (Blount convinces me that the common usage of "hopefully" as a sentence-modifying adverb is unacceptable, even execrable); French movies from the Fifties starring Brigitte Bardot; "nosism" (the delivering of one's opinions in the royal or editorial or corporate "we"); "what-if history"; and Wilt Chamberlain. There also is a modest dose of moralizing, much of it on the mark. For example: "Walt Whitman boasted of his 'barbaric yawp,' and good for him. Now America has got itself backed into the corner of claiming to be defending civilization, of all things. Not our strong suit."
By its very nature, ALPHABET JUICE does not readily lend itself to being read straight through, cover to cover. Because I feel that I should not review any book that I have not read in its entirety, I pushed myself to read ALPHABET JUICE cover to cover, though it took me two weeks of off-and-on reading. I sensed that the quality of the book began to decline a tad around the letter "Q", although that impression may well have been due in part to a certain measure of tedium. On the other hand, much that is of interest would be missed if one read only selected entries more or less at random. The best approach might be to read a letter a day. However it is read, to a literate reader ALPHABET JUICE should prove to be moderately engaging, entertaining, and educational.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Sweeten l'eau
By Jon Hunt
Juice is apt as this book squizzles around the mouth. Could Roy Blount Jr. write a sequel? Not fast enough.
"Alphabet Juice" reaches readers on two levels, I would guess. There are the appreciative mavens of wordom (worddom....word-dom?) who will chuckle and te-hee but the hardcore wordies (of the latter am I) revel in this kind of thing. Ya gotta give Blount credit when, regarding bow-wow, he can't imagine a dog forming a "b". And the last entry on "hip", referring to the guy who had a double hip operation, is one of his best.
Much of the reader's particular interest in this book might be found in how Blount exposes words knowing we may see them differently. I loved "wrought". He dwells on the "ugh" of the word while I wondered how many words in our language could add a letter to both the beginning and the end of "rough" and still come up with a word. The author is a good teacher in that he reminds us of jots and tittles but also adds "clitic" without fear of an "r"-rating.
This is a book to be savored. The narrative sometimes wanders but keep your eyes peeled for the moments when he is spot-on. This is the best book on language to come out in years and I highly recommend it.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Enthusiasm from a Word Fan
By Rob Hardy
People usually don't regard reference books as very much fun. Useful, sure, but as Mark Twain said when he looked up the dictionary's definition of an inflammation he suffered, "The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of place in a dictionary." Twain, though, didn't know Roy Blount Jr., but I think even he would have appreciated the fun in Blount's _Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory_ (Sarah Crichton Books). It's not really a dictionary, but it partially is, with definitions and comments on plenty of words Blount likes and some he does not; and it is in alphabetical order. It's long on etymology, too, but it also emphasizes the feel of words as they are formed by our organs of diction, and it has plenty of funny stories, puns, hilarious doggerel, history, social commentary, and movie recommendations. Blount obviously loves words (and it's a good thing, too, since there is a long list of books opposite the title page headed "Also by Roy Blount Jr.") and his enthusiasm is catching. Your reviewer had to start with the A words and read through the Zs, but this is not easy, because most of the words here have references to other words here, and only by a zig-zag course was the end achieved.
Take, for instance, _zigzag_, which Blount finds is from the French _ziczac_ and German _zickzack_. "I have to say, ours is better. Those _ck_ or hard _c_ sounds are hitches that hold too long; our _g_ takes just long enough to evoke a change in direction that's marked but quick." This is a theme that Blount takes throughout this book, the way some words can feel right, and advises that there ought to be a word that applies to terms like _zigzag_ which "are kinesthetically evocative of, or appropriate to, their meaning, without necessarily involving imitative noise." He proposes _sonicky_, and of course you may find it in the S section. You get the idea that he tastes the voicing of his words the way other people might taste wine, enjoying the play of tongue, teeth, and palate. "The word _nausea_ comes from the Latin for "seasickness," which came from the Greek for "ship" [as did _nautical_] - but even if it didn't have that pedigree, it would _sound_ right." There are many lovely and surprising etymologies here. _Lava_ was originally a word of dialect from Naples, and it meant a deluge of rain. Then Vesuvius sent out a deluge of molten rock, and the word took on a meaning specifically for that. Blount's eagerness to dispense information is a delight. Under "Great one-word sentences," he reminds us that "... the actual last line of _The Maltese Falcon_, which is not, as most people believe, Bogart's "This is the stuff that dreams are made on," but Ward Bond's response: "Huh?"
This is an amiable book by a funny and thoughtful man who obviously loves language, and wants us to use it expressively. Of course Blount comes down on the pedant's side to advise against how we almost always use _hopefully_ wrong, or how we must not modify _unique_, or how there should be no such word as _thusly_, which he says was first used by humorists. ("So why don't we all go around with fake arrows through our heads? Why don't we all carry rubber chickens? I believe we may say categorically that words first used by humorists are to be avoided, especially by other humorists, but also by everyone else.") This is not, however, a book of proscription, but of encouragement and delight. Writing, he tells us, "needs to be quick, so it's readable at first glance and also worth lingering over." His book is full of just that sort of writing.
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