Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with TwistsNo man of letters savors the ABC’s, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, fromadhominy tozizz,is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations inAlphabet Juice, to wide acclaim. Now,Alphabetter Juice. Which isbetter.This bookis for anyone—novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian—who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust,ew, doing inbeautiful andcutie? Why istoadless, but notfrogless, in the Oxford English Dictionary? How can the U. S. Supreme Court find relevance ingollywoddles? Might there be scientific evidence for the sonicky value ofhunch? And why would someone not bother to spell correctly the very word he is trying to define on Urbandictionary.com?Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blountdraws upon everything fromThe Tempest toThe Wire. He takes us to Iceland, for salmon-watching with a “girl gillie,” and to Georgian England, where a distinguished etymologist bites off more of a “giantess” than he can chew. Jimmy Stewart appears, in connection withkludgeand the bombing of Switzerland. Litigation oversupercalifragilisticexpialidociousleads to a vintage werewolf movie; news of possum-tossing, tometanarrative.As Michael Dirda wrote inThe Washington Post Book World, “The immensely likeable Blount clearly possesses what was called in the Italian Renaissance ‘sprezzatura,’ that rare and enviable ability to do even the most difficult things without breaking a sweat.”Alphabetter Juice is brimming with sprezzatura. Have a taste.
