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Home > Books > Subjects > Entertainment > Humor (page 2) > Alphabet Juice Energies Gists Spirits Letters Words Combinations Thereof Roots Bones Innards Piths Pips Secret Parts With Examples Usage Foul Savo
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Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, ... With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory | |||||||
 
| 80% Recommended by our customers. Publisher: Macmillan Audio Catalog: Book Release date: 2008-10-14 Media: Audio CD Format: Abridged, Audiobook, CD Ean: 9781427204936 Book Isbn: 1427204934  Tip: compare prices with similar booksAuthor:
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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? — Youtube.com After forty years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, Roy Blount Jr. still can’t get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates 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” and concentrates more on questions such as these: Did you know that both mammal and matter derive from baby talk? Have you noticed how wince makes you wince? Three and a half centuries ago, Sir 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. 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 roots, 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. |
| User Reviews: |
 Written on December 20, 2008 Summary: Alphabet Juice Very entertaining, but I quit halfway through because of the gratuitous political shots. Anyone who refers to the current Administration as the Bush "regime" just can't be taken seriously. This tendency was annoying and unnecessary. Written on December 15, 2008 Summary: A crackling potpourri for wordlovers This wasn't quite as brilliant as the first chapter, included as teaser in the New Work Times book review a few weeks ago, led me to expect. But there is plenty of good stuff to cheer and amuse the reader. The book is formatted like a dictionary, in which each entry is an idiosyncratic riff by Blount on some aspect of the alphabet, words, the English language, language generally, or English usage. (Blount is a member of the American Heritage Dictionary usage panel.) What do I mean by 'idiosyncratic riff'? Here is a representative sample: Why do so many reduplicative expressions (e.g. heebie-jeebies) in English begin with 'h' than with any other letter? (with an impressive list of 54 examples) Origins of the word 'mansuetude'. Menu-ese: language atrocities culled from menus. Goldwynisms; The (non)-admissibility of 'hopefully': Blount comes down squarely against it. (A position I disagree with - it seems to me to fill the same need as its German equivalent - "hoffentlich" - and Blount's charges of ambiguity seem unconvincing to me). Synesthesia. Great one-word, two-word, and three-word sentences; e.g. 'Fuhgeddaboudit', 'Nooses give', 'Omit needless words'. Ruminations on each of the individual letters of the alphabet. To me, Blount's thoughts about the individual letters of the alphabet were hit-or-miss, with more misses than hits. Another recurring theme of his which was reasonably amusing the first couple of times he brought it up, much less so the fifteenth, was the property he refers to by the cutesy-irritating coinage 'sonicky'. Blount uses it to mean a broader kind of onomatopoeia - a 'sonicky' word is one which is acoustically appropriate to its meaning. As examples he cites 'chunky', 'squeeze', 'foist'. The concept didn't bother me particularly, but Blount's obsessive returning to it every few pages got old really fast, and the term 'sonicky' should have been put down at birth. My final complaint about "Alphabet Juice" is the unforgivable lack of an index - a lazy, annoying omission. But this is mere caviling. These are minor flaws in a book which has more than its share of highly amusing entries. Blount's enthusiasm for language, and his appreciation for its oddities, are infectious. This would make a good gift for any language-lover on your Christmas list. That is, assuming he or she already owns the (superior) five-star "Limits of Language" by Mikael Parkvall:Limits of Language.  Written on December 11, 2008 Summary: Enthusiasm from a Word Fan 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. Written on December 1, 2008 Summary: Joy of Language This review refers to the Audiobook version of Alphabet Juice. If you have the opportunity I highly suggest giving the audio-book version a listen. I was a little dubious at first, books about language don't necessarily do very well in audio format, but I'm SO glad I gave it a try. Mr. Blount's joy and zest for language really comes alive as he reads his book. It's a sheer delight to listen to. Alphabet Juice is a superbly apt name for this book; it's not often that you find something that delights in the taste of words the way this does, the way they feel in your mouth, the way they roll off the tongue. ...Of course now I want to buy a hardcopy too, just so I can go back and find some of the really delicious turns of phrase he uses and savor them again. Written on November 23, 2008 Summary: Sweeten l'eau 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. |
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| Catalog | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book |
| Release date | 2008-10-14 | 2008-09-16 | 2008-11-18 | 2008-10-30 | 2008-11-11 | 2008-11-11 |
| Media | Audio CD | Hardcover | Hardcover | Hardcover | Hardcover | Hardcover |
| Format | Abridged, Audiobook, CD | - | - | - | - | - |
| Number of pages | - | 448 | 320 | 256 | 512 | 176 |
| Ean | 9781427204936 | 9780374254100 | 9780316017923 | 9781592403950 | 9781400063253 | 9780307264237 |
| Book Isbn | 1427204934 | 0374254109 | 0316017922 | 1592403956 | 1400063256 | 0307264238 |
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